266 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



year 1639. If the Doctor is correct, the value attached to the dates 

 on the face of these notes, to which implicit faith has been given as 

 indicating the period of their emission, will be greatly diminished, 

 for here we have what seems in the picture to be a Hung Wu note, 

 which is said to bear an inscription of a later date. Whatever it is, 

 whether note or coin, the illustration given by Dr. Bushell, in no 

 way contravenes or limits what was said about the one kwan notes 

 of that particular period being the only existing notes at command 

 of illustrators, since Dr. Bushell says that he extracted what he 

 furnishes concerning the Ming note from a Chinese work, the Chi Chin 

 So Chien Lu, and further the text of the note of 1214 given by the 

 Doctor is also taken from a chinese book. 



Twelve Old Chinese Notes and Four of the Tae Ping Rebel- 

 lion Period. 



I have already stated the circumstances connected with my acquisi- 

 tion of the first of these Chinese notes. This particular note, it will be 

 remembered, was described as " mounted on limp board with embroid- 

 ered work at back." My examination of the authorities treating of 

 Chinese notes disclosed to me the meaning of this mounting, which was 

 all the more plain when, on receiving the note, I found that the 

 "embroidered work at back" proved to be chinese brocade. It was 

 evident that I had received one of those notes of which the Jesuit 

 fathers wrote, according to Du Halde, that they are hung up "as a 

 rarity to the chief beam of the house, the people and even of the 

 quality being so as to imagine that it preserves them from all mischief." 

 Notwithstanding the loss of opportunity to inspect the back of the 

 note through the mounting on limp board, the added interest given 

 to the specimen from the fact that it had actually hung upon the 

 walls of a chinese house, possibly for two or three centuries, was more 

 than a compensation. 



My examination of the authorities who had written upon the sub- 

 ject of chinese paper money had shown me that government notes had 

 already been in use certainly between five and six hundred years, and 

 perhaps longer, when the specimen that was in my possession was 

 emitted. Concerning existing specimens I had ascertained that 

 outside the collections of chinese men of means, there were none other 

 known than the one kwan Ming note emitted somewhere about 1375. 



