470 DAVIS. 



herein as if printed in black, but it must be remembered that they were 

 superimposed in a different color after the note was printed. Marco 

 Polo described the process of stamping the seals on the notes, as 

 follows: "The principal officer, deputed by his majesty, having 

 dipped into vermilion the royal seal, committed to his custody, stamps 

 with it the piece of paper, so that the form of the seal tinged with 

 vermilion remains impressed upon it, by which it receives full authority 

 as current money. ..." 



The author of Ch'iian Pu T'ung Chih apparently devoted about 

 sixteen years of his life, during the first half of the nineteenth century 

 to the preparation of his work for publication and to running it through 

 the press. In connection with his description of the T'ang notes, 

 825-826 A.D., he states that paper money first appeared in China 

 in the period 806-820 A.D. It may be inferred that when he wrote 

 this he had not seen the Kao-tsung, Yung-hui notes, 6.50-65.5 A.D. 

 It is indeed probable that he met with these latter notes while running 

 his book through the press, and inserted designs of them without 

 disturbing the pagination of the portion of the book already prepared, 

 but actually disarranging the sequence of the page numbers by dupli- 

 cating those containing the descriptive text, the notes themselves 

 being put in without the numbers essential to designate their position. 

 At all events, he states that paper money first appeared in China 

 between 806 and 820 A.D. and in the same work describes in detail 

 notes issued 650-655 A.D. 



The author, either on the authority of Chinese historical works, or 

 from knowledge derived from the notes themselves, gives the denomi- 

 nations of about two hundred and fifty-nine notes emitted during 

 twenty-six eras or periods in the reigns of different emperors of 

 ten dvnasties, or if the Sung dvnastv is divided into the Northern 

 Sung and Southern Sung, the number of dynasties should be eleven. 

 Of these notes it would seem from what he savs that he himself had in 

 his collection about two hundred and twenty-five specimens of differ- 

 ent varieties. In the case of the total number of notes referred to as 

 well as in the statement as to the number of different varieties in his 

 possession, the precise numbers cannot be positively asserted owing 

 to the vagueness and incongruity of expression in the text. He gives 

 for instance under the period covering 860-873 A.D., two illustrations 

 and says in his text that in the year 1833, " some notes of this era were 

 acquired." The only thing positively to be ascertained from this is 

 that there were two varieties, those of which illustrations were given 

 in the book, and perhaps more. He states that during the reign of 



