98 Mr H. M. Stoker on the China-stone and 



ployed ; in fact at times, during a single firing, more than 

 £5000 worth of pottery is rendered useless by the admixture 

 of this earth, the surface of the services becoming covered 

 with a congeries of cracks and fissures ; hence great care is 

 necessary to prevent its addition. 



The terms employed to designate the kinds of calcined and 

 fused wares, are : — Pipe-clay, the least used and least impor- 

 tant ; Queen's ware ; Terra Cotta ; Basalts ; and Porcelain 

 biscuit ; the whole of which were introduced by Wedgewood, 

 to whose persevering, accurate, and scientific research, we 

 are indebted for the position our pottery now holds ; and it 

 should not be forgotten that the rapid strides by which we 

 have gained it, and the discoveries that have of later years 

 been made in this art, have been wholly derived from a good 

 practical acquaintance with chemical analysis, the import- 

 ance of which cannot be too strongly urged, on both the potter 

 and the producer of the raw material. The other and more 

 common wares are, porcelain ; pottery, an inferior kind of 

 porcelain ; and earthenware ; to the description of which I 

 shall for the present confine my attention, that of the before 

 mentioned wares, as well as of Parian, biscuit china, &c, 

 belonging more strictly to the province of the potter than to 

 that of the writer of the present Essay ; though, from the 

 history of the experiments to which their existence is due, 

 the subject will be found fraught with interest to the chemist 

 and geologist. 



Until a very late period pottery manufacture was com- 

 paratively unknown in England ; in the eighteenth century 

 we were indebted entirely to the Chinese for our best, and 

 to the continental potteries for our commoner wares ; a cen- 

 tury has but elapsed, and to the credit of the industrious, the 

 persevering, the indefatigably speculating, Englishman, be it 

 added, that from pole to pole, under any portion of the globe's 

 equator, wherever the traveller may roam in search of adven- 

 ture, no less than through the length and breadth of his happy 

 little island home, he will find, in his cup, his plate, or his 

 dish, a never dying testimonial to the enterprising character 

 of the Englishman. 



