INTRODUCTION 



"The Illustrated Mirror of Jades says: 

 In the second month, the plants in the 

 mountains receive a bright luster. When 

 their leaves fall, they change into jade. 

 The spirit of jade is like a beautiful 

 woman." 



The two minerals nephrite and jadeite, popularly comprised under 

 the name jade, belong to the hardest and most cherished materials of 

 which primitive man availed himself in shaping his chisels, hatchets, 

 ornaments, amulets and many other implements. Such objects, par- 

 tially of considerable antiquity, have been found in many parts of the 

 world — in Asia, New Zealand, in prehistoric Europe and America. The 

 geographical areas occupied by nephrite are so extended that it may 

 almost be classified with flint as one of those mineral substances utilized 

 to a large extent by a great number of peoples. Since the localities 

 where nephrite occurs in nature seem to be difficult to discover, and 

 since nephrite was known for a long time as coming only from Asia and 

 New Zealand, and jadeite merely from certain districts of Asia, the 

 scientific world was being held in long suspense by what is known as 

 the nephrite question. Though now a matter of historical interest, 

 it may not be amiss to review it briefly for the instructive value which 

 it bears on the development of science. 



At the time when Heinrich Fischer 1 in Freiburg carried on his epoch- 

 making investigations on the mineralogical and archaeological sides of 

 crude and wrought jades, no places of the occurrence in situ of nephrite 

 were known in either Europe or America. The problem, therefore, 

 pivoted around the question as to how the peoples of these two parts 

 of the world had obtained the material for their nephrite and jadeite 

 objects. It then was a matter of natural consequence that Fischer 

 should elaborate the theory that the nephrite objects in pre-Columbian 

 America had been transported there, owing to an influx and settlement 

 of Asiatic tribes, and that those brought to light in Europe were ac- 

 counted for by the assumption of a prehistoric commercial intercourse 

 with Asia, or by the migrations of peoples. 2 This argument once 



1 See Bibliography at end. 



s It should be remarked, by the way, that Fischer was a true scholar and most 

 conscientious worker, and certainly greater in his lifelong error than many a minor 

 demi-scholar who postfestum celebrated a cheap triumph over the end of the nephrite 

 question. 



