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



inquiring the basis of this information, he said that it was called a fish- 

 knife (yii tao), and I was able to explain to him that it derives this name 

 merely from its peculiar form, being curved like a fish, and that, for 

 the rest, it answers all purposes of a common pocket-knife. The 



authors of the Ku yii t'u p'u 

 must have been in a similar 

 position, having heard these 

 objects popularly called 

 "wheel-naves " and then con- 

 cluding from this name that 

 they really were. 



When I ascertained that 

 this identification was en- 

 tirely unfounded, I began, 

 by reading the Chou li, to 

 arrive at the conclusion that 

 these objects must be re- 

 garded as the ancient insignia 

 called ts'ung (Giles No. 

 12026), and then discovered 

 that Wu Ta-ch'eng had 

 reached the same result. 

 Therefore, I now give the 

 word to this scholar and pass 

 his material and notes in 

 review. 

 The two specimens illustrated in 

 Figs. 47-48 are derived from Wu Ta- 

 ch'eng 's book and correctly identified 

 by him with the ta ts'ung (Giles No. 

 12026) mentioned in the Chou li (Biot, 

 Vol. II, p. 527). Both are hollow 

 cylinders, round inside and square in 

 cut outside, with two short projecting 

 round necks at both ends; the former 

 is plain, without any ornamentation, 

 of a dark-colored or dark-green jade with black veins all over, and as 

 he says, saturated with mercury; the other piece of a uniformly black 

 jade is decorated along the four corners with nine separate rectangular 

 fields in relief carvings. The ornamentation in each field is the same; 

 two bands consisting of five lines each, two knobs below, and a smaller 

 band filled with spirals and groups of five strokes alternately horizontal 



Fig. 47. 

 Green Jade Tube, ta ts'ung. 



