40 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



4 mm along the back and increases from there in the direction towards 

 the blade to 6 mm. The blade is transparent when viewed against the 

 light. Many notches are visible in the cutting edge from which it might 

 follow that actual cutting has been done with it. The back, and the 

 upper and lower edges are carefully beveled. There are five perfora- 

 tions, 1 the three stretching in one vertical line parallel with the back 

 having the same size (i.i cm in diameter), while the central hole has a 

 diameter of 1.5 cm and the one below of 0.5 cm; the boring has been 

 executed from one face only, as can be seen also in the illustration; the 

 projecting rings there visible are on the same level as the opposite face. 

 The walls of these perforations are well polished as in all cases known 

 to me. The fundamental color of the jade is light -green, full of black 

 veins and spots and of white clouds, as may be recognized in the repro- 

 duction. Also this implement doubtless belongs to the emblems of 

 power as described in the next chapter. 



Figure 2, Plate VIII, represents also an extraordinary specimen 40.4 

 cm long, 5.2-6.2 cm wide, and 1.8 cm thick. It is a chisel cut out of a 

 grayish silvery jade in which specks like silver clouds are strewn all 

 over. The perforation has been drilled from both faces, the two borings 

 not meeting exactly, and a projecting ring being left in the interior. 

 The cutting edge is broken off, and apparently in times long ago. That 

 no more than the edge is broken, can be seen from the lateral sides 

 just tapering into a narrow strip above the breakage. The lateral edge, 

 partially showing in the illustration, is hollowed out in a flat, long seg- 

 ment which is in a plane a bit lower than the remaining portion of this 

 edge; this was perhaps done to afford a firmer grip to the second finger 

 when handling the instrument. 



A jade dagger, unique for its material, size and shape, is in the collec- 

 tion of H. E. Tuan Fang, Peking, and here reproduced in Plate IX 

 from a photograph kindly presented by him to the author. It was 

 dug up in 1903 not far from the old city of Feng-siang fu in Shensi 

 Province from a considerable depth and is, in all probability, older 

 than the Chou period. Its substance is a peculiar light-reddish jade, 

 such as I have seen in no other specimen, designated by the Chinese 

 hung pao yii (Giles No. 5269). It is a two-edged dagger (92 cm long 

 and 12 cm wide), both edges being equally sharp, running into a point 

 bent over to one side, not central as in the later bronze daggers. Another 

 peculiar feature is the flattening out of the two surfaces of the blade 

 into four distinct zones running longitudinally. At the end of the 

 blade a rectangular band, filled with cross-hatchings and surrounded 

 on either side by four parallel incisions, is engraved. A rectangular, 

 perforated hilt (16 cm long) is sharply set off from the blade, near which 



1 Compare a similar arrangement of four perforations in Fig. 40. 



