24 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 



glazed white being the only exception. Not having had occasion to 

 see any of them, I think I should not be too positive in my judgment, 

 but can merely give it as my impression that the Borneo dragon- 

 jars are very similar in shape, glaze and design to those from the 

 Philippines, and that both seem to have originated from the same 

 Chinese kiln. 



Unfortunately, our knowledge of Chinese pottery is far from being 

 complete, and anything like a scientific history of it does not yet exist. 

 Our collectors have been more interested in porcelains, and the subject 

 of common pottery has been almost wholly neglected. Porcelain is 

 nothing but a variety of pottery and can be properly understood only 

 from a consideration of the subject in its widest range. Porcelain and 

 stoneware appear in China as parallel phenomena, that is to say, the 

 same processes of glazing and decorating have been applied to both 

 categories alike, and certain porcelain glazes have their precedents in 

 corresponding glazes on non-porcellanous clays. The study of this 

 ware is therefore of importance for the history of porcelain, and it has 

 besides so many qualities and merits of its own that it is deserving of 

 close investigation for its own sake. If we had at our disposal such 

 complete collections of pottery from China as we have from Japan, it 

 would presumably be easy to point out the Chinese specimens cor- 

 responding to those of the Philippines, and to settle satisfactorily the 

 question as to the furnace where they were produced. Such a collec- 

 tion, whose ideal object it would be to embrace representative speci- 

 mens, ancient and modern, of the many hundreds of Chinese kilns, will 

 probably never exist, as it would require for itself a large museum to be 

 housed. From my personal experience, restricted to the more promi- 

 nent kilns of the provinces of Shantung, Chili, Honan, Shansi, Shensi and 

 Kansu, I may say that dragon-jars of the Philippine type are not 

 turned out there at the present day, nor can ancient specimens 

 of this kind be obtained there. Both facts are conclusive evi- 

 dence, for if once made, some vestiges of them would have sur- 

 vived in modern forms, in view of the stupendous persistency of 

 traditions among the potters. A priori it may be inferred that the 

 Philippine pottery came from those localities which were in closest 

 commercial touch with the Islands, i. e. the provinces of Fukien and 

 Kuangtung in southern China. The fictile productions of the latter 

 province are included under the general term Kuang yao, Kuang being 

 an abbreviation of the name of the province, yao meaning "pottery." 

 The city of Yang-kiang in the prefecture of Chao-k'ing, not far from 

 the coast, may be credited, in all likelihood, with the manufacture 



