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Sénégal (1757); he might have added the Encyclopédie. But RUMPHIUS, ALDROVANDI and ADANSON
lived four and five centuries after porcellana and porcelletta are attested in texts, and their
speculations have not even the value which may attach to the studies of modern etymologists.

In my opinion, the question is not yet settled, but I am tempted to think that YULE's common
sense carried the day once more.

Cowries are mentioned in the Middle Ages perhaps before Polo. In the maritime code of
Barcelona called Consolat del mar (ch. 44), dated c. 1250, mention is made of products imported
from Egypt, including cotton in bales, spun wood, porcelanas, elephant's teeth, etc. PESCHEL
(Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 1855, 176) saw there the first mention of a trade import of china-ware
to Europe, and YULE (Hobson-Jobson², 725) adopted the same interpretation. HEYD (II, 680)
was, I think, right to feel diffident about it. He remarked that Pegolotti, writing in 1343, named
the porcellâne, between coloquint and myrrh, among the goods which sold at Venice by the hun-
dredweight? and concluded: « Can it be believed that vases of Chinese porcelain were ever sold
by the hundredweight? Don't we have to deal, in both cases, with the shells bearing the same
name, which were sent to the West to be manufactured by some special industry? » For Pego-
lotti's passage, YULE too had thought that probably shells, and not China dishes, were intended
It is more to be regretted that, in his recent edition of Pegolotti, EVANS (p. 427) should have inter-
preted porcellâne as « purslain ». Purslain is a common plant, indigenous in Europe, and which
can never have been an item of maritime trade from the East. I have no doubt that HEYD's surmise
was correct for the porcelanas of the Consolat del mar as well as for Pegolotti's porcellâne. That
a trade existed in cowries from the East to Europe is confirmed by a Florentine tariff of 1442 which
mentions porcielette marine (cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson², 726). But there is still a more important
text, which has escaped both HEYD and YULE. It is that of Aluise da Ca' da Mosto which I have
quoted under « Cowry »; from it we know with certainty that, in the middle of the 15th cent., Venice
imported from the Orient small white cowries (porcellette bianche) identical with the ones which
some African tribes used as currency. To what use they were put and whether, as HEYD surmises,
they were treated by a special industry is another problem which I shall leave out for the present.

We may now pass to the second meaning of « porcelain », that of « china-ware ». Some hesita-
tion has been felt whether this new meaning was evolved on account of the resemblance of the
glazed surface of Chinese porcelain with the polished and brilliant shell of the Cypraea, or because
shells were supposed to enter into its composition (cf. HEYD, II, 678). Oriental languages give
no clue, since their designations for « china-ware » merely mean « Chinese » (see « Cin » and « Facfur »).
As we have seen, the porcelanas of the Consolat del mar were most probably cowries, so that the
earliest example hitherto discovered of « porcelain » with the meaning « china-ware » is in Polo's text,
and Polo's description shows that he was well aware of the fabrication of china-ware not from shells,
but from a « kind of earth » (cf. Vol. I, 352). It would be futile, however, to suppose that Polo was
the initiator in this use of the term, which probably originated in the West with people who knew
nothing of the fabrication of « porcelain ». That cowries have been often believed to be used for
making china-ware is proved by many texts. The Latin translator of Z may have laboured under
that misconception when he spoke of parasides de porcelanis (not porcelana), and perhaps RAMUSIO
13.