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



escapes our knowledge, and it would be preposterous to speculate as 

 to their meaning. They differ from the tiger-heads represented on the 

 tiger jade-tablets (Figs. 81-84). 



The design on the jade disk in Fig. 74 which is of intense interest 

 is interpreted by Wu as "a nine-dragons-pattern with three heads en 

 face and six heads in profile." But these six heads are manifestly 

 bird-heads, and the arrangement is such that there are three pairs of 

 bird-heads, and that each of these pairs alternates with a dragon-head. 



Fig. 74- 

 Jade Disk, pi, decorated with 

 Dragon and Bird Heads. 



Each dragon-head has a bird-couple opposite to it, and as, besides, the 

 bird-couple has the same space allotted to it as a dragon-head, the 

 principle of arrangement is one by six (not by nine), a number corres- 

 ponding to Heaven represented by the disk. From a viewpoint of 

 mere decorative art, this design is a fillet or interlaced band terminating 

 in birds' and animals' heads. In the decorative art of the Amur tribes 

 many traditions of very early Chinese ornamentation have survived 

 to the present day, and when engaged in a research of these peoples in 

 1898-99, I had occasion to study their ornamental designs in connection 

 with the verbal explanations received from their makers. In "The 

 Decorative Art of the Amur Tribes," pp. 8-16, I discussed at length 

 the great importance of interlacement bands in their ornamentation, 



