The Italians of the sixteenth century used the wheel in the same way, fashioning the clay with the hands and certain tools of wood and iron (Fig. 25). It would thus appear that the potter’s wheel improved in due course of time. At first it was merely a horizontal revolving disk turned by hand; then it consisted of a three-feet shaft with the disk on the top, and a driving-wheel below to be turned by the potter’s foot; later still, it was turned by means of a foot-board, like that of a turning-lathe or printing-press; afterward the driving-wheel was separated from the disk which it turned by means of a connecting rope or band, and was worked by an assistant; more recently, steam has been brought in to the saving of labor, and in many large factories is the chief power used. [Illustration: Fig. 25.--Venetian Potters of the Sixteenth Century. Showing two kinds of potter’s wheels in use among them. (From engraving by V. Biringuccio.)] It is almost unnecessary to add that when throwing was resorted to in place of moulding, the subsequent operations of shaving, polishing, and attaching the handles and ornaments were performed in the same manner as that described above. We now reach the third process, that of baking or firing. Sun-dried bricks have been found in nearly every part of the world. They were introduced into Spain by the Arabs, and in the New World have been found from Mexico to Peru. In Egypt they represent the earliest works of the potter; and from that country, Assyria, and Babylonia, relics of the rudest stage of the art of working in clay have reached our own time. The climate of Egypt was such that unbaked bricks were sufficiently lasting for architectural purposes, and walls, tombs, and entire pyramids were constructed of them. The use of sun-dried clay was restricted in Assyria to bricks and small figures of an apparently religious character. In Babylon, as in Assyria, similar bricks were used as foundations for buildings. Among the Greeks sun-dried clay was widely employed. Many of their temples and the walls of some of their fortified cities were constructed of bricks dried in the sun. Even statues and models were made of unbaked clay. The kind of furnace in use among the Egyptians at a very early period has already been described. No remnant of those used by the Greeks has been discovered, and all the information regarding them has been derived from representations on pottery or gems. A tolerably correct idea of the more ancient ones may be conveyed by describing them as tall baker’s ovens, into which the wares were pushed and baked like loaves. There are several vases now in existence upon which furnaces of this kind are depicted. A kylix from Vulci, and now at Munich, is remarkable for the scene depicted on it. One of the epigrammata of Homer, entitled ‘Ο Καμινς--“The Furnace,” has been translated by Cowper. The explanatory preface is attributed to Herodotus.