They have a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be believed.

After my first week in my kitchen I used to wonder, not at the breakages, but at anything remaining unbroken.
My maids had a very ingenious method of disposing of the fragments of their pottery misfortunes.

At the back of the house an open patch of ground, thickly covered with an under-growth of native grass, and the usual large proportion of sheltering tussocks stretched away to the foot of the nearest hill.

This was burned every second year or so, and when the fire had passed away the sight it revealed was certainly very curious.

Beneath each tussock had lain concealed a small heap of broken china, which must have been placed there in the dead of the night.