July, 1913. • Notes on Turquois. 23 



In regard to these petrefacts of Yung-k"ang, another interesting 

 note is given by Tu Wan or Tu Ki-yang in his Treatise on Stones, 

 entitled Yiin lin shi p'n (Ch. b, p. 3) published in the year 1133 (Sung 

 period), the oldest Chinese lapidarium extant.' This author speaks of 

 a poet of the T'ang dynasty, Lu Kuei-meng,^ who had obtained a pillow 

 and a lute of stone, and left two poems on these objects. In the intro- 

 duction to the poems, he mentions the fir-trees of Yung-k'ang which 

 from old age had turned into stones, and that one evening, as the 

 effect of a big rainstorm, a whole fir-tree grove on the mountains sudden- 

 ly changed into stone, and fell to the ground, smashed into pieces from 

 two to three feet in diameter, and these are still there; the natives of 

 the place, then, carried such pieces away and worked them up into 

 footstools, some as small as a fist, or into low tables by breaking the 

 larger pieces. 



Another author, Chang Lu-i, states that "there are two varieties of 

 these stones produced by transformation of fir-trees, one of yellow, and 

 one of purple color, of very fine substance and shape, with water marks 

 on the surface, some also with marks of the tree bark, others with marks 

 of the tree knots, such as occur on the T'ien-t'ai mountains (in T'ai-chou 

 fu, Che-kiang). There are those the transmutation of which is not 

 complete, but which still bear the fir-tree substance; these are useful 

 as medicine. If those perfectly transformed are taken as medicine, 

 they have the effect upon man that he forgets passion and stops longing; 

 this medicine cures love-sickness; if men or women who are unhappily 

 in love partake of it, they will intercept their thoughts and not remember 

 again." This is certainly a sympathetic remedy; in the same manner 

 as the tree has lost its life and changed into a lifeless mass of stone, so it 

 has the effect on the human heart to make it forget, and to render it 

 cold and old like stone. 



cal knowledge of the ancients has been treated by E. v. Lasaulx, Die Geologie der 

 Griechen und Romer, pp. 6-16 {Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie, Munchen, 

 1851). 



^ It is reprinted in the enormous collection Chi pu tsu tsai ts'ung shu, Section 28; 

 also in T'ang Sung ts'ung shu. This work is widely different from the class of books 

 styled pin ts'ao, in which the therapeutic value of the substances occurring in nature 

 forms the principal point of view. The book of Tu Wan is written from the stand- 

 point of economic geography. The minerals are all named for the localities from 

 which they originate, and the author is chiefly interested in their industrial utiliza- 

 tion. This feature lends his notes a practical value, and a complete translation of 

 them, aside from the purely scientific interest, might yield also results for the study of 

 economic mineralogy in China. 



^ He is known as the author of the Siao ming lu (Wylie, Notes on Chinese Litera- 

 ture, p. 182) and of a small treatise on the plough (ibid., p. 93, and O. Franke, K^ng 

 Tschi T'u, p. 45, Hamburg, 1913). Bretschneider (/. c, p. 172, No. 493) mentions 

 a work Poems of Lu Kuei-mSng as cited in T'ang shu, Ch. 196. The Collection of his 

 Poems (shitsi) is quoted in Kao chaiman lu (Ch. i, p. i; Shou shan ko ts'ung shu, 

 Vol. 91). 



