A very forcible example of the historical value of earthen-ware is found almost at our very door. Irving relates, in his “Life of Washington,” that, not long after his birth, his father removed to Stafford County, near Fredericksburg. The house stood on a knoll overlooking the Rappahannock. This was the home of George’s youth. The meadow between the house and the river was his play-ground. But this home, like that in which he was born, has disappeared; the site is only to be traced by fragments of _bricks_, _china_, and _earthen-ware_. Another example may be taken from a paragraph which appeared in the daily papers very recently, in which it was stated that two _amphoræ_--the name given to the Greek two-handled, oval-bodied vases (Fig. 2) with pointed base, which have been found wherever Greek commerce extended--containing fifty thousand coins of the Emperor Gallienus and his immediate successors, had been discovered at Verona. Nearly all were as fresh as when coming from the mint. Gallienus assumed the purple A.D. 260, and reigned for eight years before he was assassinated at Milan. For over fifteen hundred years, therefore, these vases preserved their numismatic treasures. [Illustration: Fig. 2.--Greek and Phœnician (on right) Amphoræ. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)] [Illustration: Fig. 3.--Chinese Bottles found in Egyptian Tombs.] Still another instance may be mentioned in which the close connection between history and its handmaid, pottery, is illustrated. Some time ago certain travellers in Egypt purchased a number of small jars (Fig. 3) of a kaolinic composition, which they were told had been taken from the tombs. They were evidently, from the style of decoration and the characters they bore, of Chinese manufacture; and the first conclusion was, that, as evidence was not wanting to show that one of them had been taken from a very old tomb on its being first opened, they were possessed of a highly venerable antiquity. Subsequent investigations, however, showed that they had been obtained from certain ports on the Red Sea, and were to be ascribed to a comparatively recent date. The discovery subtracted about two thousand five hundred years from their age. But how came these Chinese vases to find their way to the commercial cities of the Red Sea? Before navigators had learned that the great highway between Europe and the East was round the South of Africa, intercourse was maintained either by the overland route or through the Persian Gulf. This accounts for the abundance of Chinese porcelain found in Persia. Some of the specimens may have been left on the western side of the Gulf, and have thence found their way across Arabia to the shores of the Red Sea, whence they were obtained by the fraudulent venders of Lower Egypt.