If it was a fruit requiring great care, and rare, how much would be thought of it? Has 

 the highest state to which it is capable of being improved yet been achieved? 



How admirably the Chinese in old times made use of trees and flowers as patterns in 

 decorating their magnificent porcelain, both in the trailing forms of some of the plants, as well as 

 in the use of the colours of the flowers ; and what care they seem to have taken in horticulture 

 itself. I have sometimes considered whether they have not aimed at copying the delicate shades 

 in their beautiful dyed silks, and blended these shades in imitation of the colours they have so 

 successfully arrived at attaining in their lovely moutan peonies ; some of which are evidently varieties 

 of one of Nature's species produced by them hundreds of years ago. At any rate they had first- 

 rate taste for delicacy of colouring ; but by what dyes and by what process they did produce 

 either the colours used, or the change in that of the plants, I know nothing ; to say the least, they 

 show the most exquisite appreciation of colour, and also of blending congenial colours ; in every way 

 they attempt to do this there is decided harmony. Am I digressing too much if I wish to pay a 

 humble tribute to their ancestors' great talent in their appreciation of the use of colour in many 

 of their older pieces of porcelain, many of which put the later productions quite in the shade. 

 In some of these they seem to be copying "Crown Derby" pottery in the mixture and density 

 of the red and blue and other bright colours, as well as in the heaviness of the gilding. This, in 

 some way, would lead one to suppose their original good taste was degenerating, in this respect at 

 any rate ; and if it is it is much to be regretted. The pace we are going at, in the present time, 

 seems to be assimilating nations' ideas to a great extent, and perhaps is turning us all into copyists 

 of each other's works for the sake of fashion and the love of monev. In former times it would 



