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



doubtful, and that the designs applied to them arose, not in the studios 

 of lapidaries, but in the schools of painters. 



In view of these self-made confessions, and considering the entire 

 pictorial character of the drawings in the Ku yii Vu p'u executed by 



-£ 





Fig. 17s. Fig. 176. 



Jade Buckle with Head of Phenix, Mediaeval Ancient Jade Buckle with Horse-Head and Hydra 

 (from Ku yii t'u p'u). (from Ku yii t'u p'u). 



well-known artists of the brush of the Sung period, I cannot banish the 

 thought that these artists themselves may have been the agents in 

 transmitting their own designs to the sculptors who forthwith executed 

 them in jade. This theory — and it has no pretention to be more than 

 that — would possibly furnish a reasonable explanation for the pecu- 

 liarly systematic and schematic character of this singular and anomalous 



