enhance the charm of the jug. The other specimen is of better design. It is possibly by Pratt of Staffordshire, whose jugs with this style of foliage on the body have been identified after research by collectors. They are noticeable for their yellow and blue and green decorations and moulded acanthus-leaf ornament at base. The Pratt period from 1795 to 1810 is coincident with much fine potting in Staffordshire. It has been asserted that Pratt was the only Staffordshire potter who remained uninfluenced by Wedgwood's style; it is curious to find a jug of this type with the impressed mark "Wedgwood." Wedgwood." The gallery around the top of this jug is pleasing, and there is little to suggest a form other then normal, except the jutting tube at the front. The handle with the modelled figure is grotesque in its modelling. It gives just that touch of humour which such a jug possibly needed. It is the note of abnormality.

The Chinese Ginger Jar of Commerce.-There is something peculiarly homely in the Chinese ginger jar, which came into this country, possibly for a hundred years, hundred years, filled with that delicious, syrupy compound beloved of most of us in our childhood. Somehow ginger has not the same flavour nowadays as it had when as a special treat it was quarried from the strange blue jar, with a long ladle, which brought up from its mysterious depths huge brown islands of aromatic flavour. My father had a special

jar of his own, which he said was worth fifty pounds, and on great occasions we partook of this ginger with its added flavour of plutocratic association. It was not till years after that his subtle jest penetrated my dull mentality. It appears he had lent fifty pounds to an errant sea captain, who had sent him this jar of ginger as a present, and that was all my father ever had in lieu of his fifty golden sovereigns.

All through the nineteenth century these jars came in a constant stream to Europe, and they may be found scattered on the Continent as well as in England. To-day other jars with lesser art contain ginger which seemingly has fallen upon as decadent days, at least so it seems to the adult palate. The jars of our childhood have one pattern recurring with unerring precision and recording the same pictorial story. The writer has purchased examples of these old ginger jars as remote as Denmark, and at intervals of ten and fifteen years apart, and still here is the same symbolic story told in a few broad brush strokes by Chinese artists from generation to generation.

Here is the story, and the illustrations of one jar turned around, show the tableaux. There were three brothers, all fishermen, and one was a hunchback, Ah Den, who never accompanied his brothers on their perilous voyages, but contented himself with the rod and line. The first scene shows the junk fishing, with its nets spread with

their floating bladders; but in the sky, depicted always in every example we have met with, is a sign like a note of interrogation. It signifies an approaching typhoon. As the story goes, the brothers never returned, and their cabins on the sea-shore, environed by trees with a background of mountains, are seen to be sealed, awaiting their return. The third picture shows the sorrowful Ah Den casting for all eternity his line, awaiting the return of his two brothers, who come not again.

All this symbolism appears innocently on a trade ginger jar, that is if you can read it aright, sent to the outer barbarian, that "red-haired devil," that he might learn something of art and taste something of ginger that is hot in the mouth. We should be profoundly thankful. And such stray jars, even now the story is here told for the first time, may still be procured for the modest sum of five shillings. Happy to relate, there are no fabrications. Some day a real art critic will discover that they are great and wonderful and mysterious, and then-who knows?-the Japanese may step in with glorious imitations of something that was once, and is now, as caviare to the general.

Wedgwood Tobacco Pipe Heads.-Among the miscellaneous articles made at Etruria are found some that may have escaped the attention of the collector. The fine jasper bell-pulls are known, and one of white, green, and lilac, is illustrated