68 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIII. 



from the temple Fa-men in F6ng-siang to the capital Si-ngan fu to be shown in the 

 palace and in the monasteries of the city (compare Kiu T'ang shu, Ch. 15 A and De 

 Groot, Album Kern, p.' 135). These five passages relate to the age of the T'ang 

 dynasty and show that si-se, as then employed in China, were precious stones of 

 transparent quality, on a par with genuine pearls and precious metals; they further 

 bear out the fact that s^-s^ were jewels not bigger than a pearl, otherwise they could 

 not have been strung together with pearls. All this renders the assumption of s^-se 

 being the turquois impossible and confirms my opinion that it was the balas ruby. 

 We insisted above on the popularity of the word s^-si in the T'ang period. This is 

 fully corroborated by the interesting work Tu yang tsa pien where it enters into com- 

 parisons from which it becomes clear that the word was very familiar and generally 

 understood at that time. In Ch. c, p. 5 are described three marvelous plants 

 which, when eaten, guard man from old age. The first of these is called shuang lin 

 chi, "the agaric with the double lin (female unicorn)," and is described as a plant 

 with one stalk and two flowers so hidden away that they are scarcely visible, and 

 shaped like a lin with head and tail, all complete; and they produce seeds like se-se. 



p. 36, note I. Turquois-mines in the district of Upper NasiyS in Ferghana are 

 mentioned by Ibn Haukal (978 a. d., ed. of De Goeje, Bibl. Geogr. Arab., p. 397), as 

 Mr. Guy le Strange, the excellent Persian scholar of Cambridge, England, has been 

 good enough to write me. M. Pelliot refers, as regards turquois-mines of Khojend, 

 to Pa VET DE Courteille, Baber nameh, Vol. I, p. 7. This work is not accessible to 

 me, but I find in the new English translation of A. S. Beveridge (The Memoirs of 

 Baber, p. 8) the passage as follows: "To the north of both the town [Khojend] and 

 the river lies a mountain range called Munughul; people say there are turquois and 

 other mines in it, and there are many snakes." There is, accordingly, no longer 

 any reason to doubt the indigenous occurrence of turquois in the territory of Fer- 

 ghana, and it will be correct to assume that it was mined there from the latter part 

 of the tenth century. 



p. 40. Mr. Guy le Strange has been good enough to refer me to the fact that the 

 text of the passage of Ibn Haukal (Hauqal or Hawqal, as others spell it), the con- 

 tinuer or re-editor of Istakhri, is found in De Goeje's Bibl. Geogr. Arab., p. 313; the 

 turquois mines, according to him, were near Nuqan, which is Tus to the north of 

 modern Meshed. On p. 362 of the same work, celebrated turquois mines are men- 

 tioned in Transoxania near the mountains called Jabal-Buttam. 



p. 43, note 2. In regard to the uk-nu stone mentioned in the Assyrian inscrip- 

 tions Mr. Pinches has shown that it denotes lapis lazuli from the Zagros range (Jour- 

 nal Royal Asiatic Society, 1898, p. 259, note i). I have no judgment on this point. 



p. 44, note 2, and p. 62. It is assumed by several authors that lapis lazuli is 

 found in China. A. Williamson, who has written an interesting article on the 

 productions of northern China (Journal China Branch R. As. Soc, Vol. IV, 1868, 

 p. 41), asserts on hearsay reports that in Shan-si, and among the hills in the south of 

 Shen-si, precious stones, stich as lapis lazuli, ruby, etc., abound, and that he has 

 every reason to believe the report correct. F. Porter Smith (Contributions towards 

 the Materia Medica and Natural History of China, p. 129, Shanghai, 1871) who takes 

 the word liu-li in the sense of lapis lazuli says that the blue mineral known by this 

 name is met with in very fine specimens in China and Central Asia. In the "Cata- 

 logue special desobjets exposes dans la section chinoise a I'expositionde Hanoi, 1902" 

 (p. 121) mention is made of the lapis lazuli of the Island of Hainan. In the latter 

 case it is more than probable that the determination is wrong and merely due to a 

 confusion with cobalt which, as well known, is obtained on Hainan (Hirth, Chine- 

 sische Studien, p. 251). According to R. Pumpelly (Geological Researches, p. 117, 

 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. XV, Washington, 1867) lapis lazuli is 

 found at Mount Nien in the district of Ch'ang-shan, prefecture of K'u-chou, ChS- 

 kiang Province, and in the district of Lo-ts'ing, prefecture of W6n-chou, of the same 

 province. These statements, however, as the entire list of minerals in which they are 

 contained, are based on the Ta Ts'ing i t'ung chi and other Chinese sources examined 

 by "the author's Chinese secretary" (p. 109). But I am at a loss to explain where 



