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



the wood are still preserved in delicate outlines. It is generally called K'ang-kan 

 stone."' 



In 767 A. D. the painter Pi Hung is said to have executed a wall- 

 painting on which fossil fir-trees were depicted, evoking poetical eulogies 

 on the part of admirers.^ 



The Taoists, with their interest in the beauties and wonders of 

 nature, could not fail to seize this attractive subject, and to interpret 

 the phenomenon. The Lu i ki (Ko chi king yiian, Ch. 7, p. 6), a fabulous 

 book by theTaoist monk Tu Kuang-t'ing of the tenth century,' reports: 



*' In a pavilion on a mountain in Yung-k'ang hien in Wu chou (the modern Kin- 

 hua fu in Ch6-kiang Province) there are rotten fir-trees. If you break a piece oflF, 

 you will find that it is not decayed in the water but a substance altered into stone 

 which previously was not yet transformed in that manner. On examining the pieces 

 in the water, they turn out to be transformations of the same character. These 

 metamorphoses do not differ from fir-trees as to branches and bark; only they are 

 very hard."* 



1 Compare d'Herbelot, BibliothSque orientale, Vol. IV, p. 165 (La Haye, 1779). 

 The Chinese cyclopasdias quote this passage very inaccurately and with arbitrary 

 changes. Ko chi king yiian (Ch. 7, p. 6), for example, writes the name of the river 

 K'ang-tse, omits a whole sentence and adds at the end: "The stone has the designs 

 of a fir-tree." 



2 P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 100 A, p. 21 b. 



^ Compare Wylie (Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 200) who dates this author in 

 the tenth century (likewise p. 221). The Lu i ki has been adopted into the Taoist 

 Canon (L. Wieger, Le canon taoiste, p. iii. No. 586); Dr. Wieger, however, places 

 the work and the author in the ninth century. M. Paul Pelliot {Journal asiatique, 

 1912, Juillet-Aotlt, p. 149) fortunately sheds light on the matter by informing us that 

 Tu Kuang-t'ing lived toward the close of the T'ang dynasty, and that all his works 

 come down from the beginning of the tenth century. Bretschneider {Botanicon 

 Sinicum, pt. i, p. 172, No. 492) states that a work with the title Lu i ki must have 

 been extant in the sixth century, as it is quoted in a book of that time; but it seems 

 not to be known whether the work there referred to is really identical with the Lu i ki 

 of Tu Kuang-t'ing. When Wylie points out that the productions of this author 

 have forfeited all claim to authenticity, this is certainly correct as regards their 

 historical value. He must not be judged, however, in this light, but should be 

 appreciated as a Taoist recluse and dreamer who reveals to us interesting phases of 

 Taoist psychology by describing visions of dragons, tigers, tortoises, serpents and 

 fishes, or relates extraordinary dreams and strange phenomena happening near the 

 graveyards, who now records the principal hills and lakes of the empire famous as 

 retreats of Taoist devotees, now tells the story of the Wu-i Mountain of Fu-kien 

 renowned for its plantations of tea. 



* The Po wu chi, a work by Chang Hua (232-300 A. d.) says: "The root of the 

 fir-tree partakes of the nature of stone; stones, when cracked, are dissolved into sand 

 and produce a fir-tree; and a fir-tree, when reaching three thousand years, again 

 alters into stone." The Po wu chi was lost during the Sung period and compiled at 

 a later date from extracts embodied in other publications (Wylie, Notes, p. 192); 

 there is, consequently, no guaranty that any text of this work, as preserved in the 

 present editions, really goes back to the third century. — The above subject has also an 

 interesting bearing on the Chinese knowledge of fossils, which should be treated some 

 day in a coherent essay. There is a great deal of information on dragon bones and 

 teeth originating from fossil hipparion and rhinoceros, petrified fishes, crabs, and 

 swallows, all procurable in the Chinese drug-stores. There are similar accounts 

 among the Arabs (M. Reinaud, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes, Vol. I, 

 p. 2 1 ; P. A. VAN der Lith, Livre des merveilles de I'lnde, p. 1 7 1 ) , and the palaeontologi- 



