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



of good turquoises which are free from flaws and with very Httle green, 

 while inferior kinds are known as "Tibetan" and "Chinese turquoises," 

 which come to Ladakh from Lhasa or China; they are full of flaws and 

 generally very green. The latter remark holds good only for Tibetan 

 stones, as the Chinese are usually azure-blue. "The best turquoises," 

 concludes Ramsay, "come up from India. Ladakhis object to flaws, 

 but they like a little green, as they consider it a sort of guarantee that 

 the turquois has not been manufactured." 



In the following notes on China it will be seen that large quantities 

 of turquoises cut into stones or beads and worked into carved objects 

 are imported nowadays from China into Tibet ; they are largely used by 

 Chinese traders for purposes of barter with the Tibetans. * 



III. Turquois in China 



The turquois, though found at present in central China in situ and 

 commercially exploited by Chinese traders for export trade into Tibet 

 and Mongolia, is not generally known to the Chinese people, for the 

 apparent reason that it is but little employed by them and plays no 

 ■ significant part in their life.^ Outside of Peking and Si-ngan fu, where 

 the trade is monopolized by a few of the initiated, the stone is hardly 

 familiar to the people at large, nor to the educated classes; in Shanghai, 

 Hankow, and Canton, it is entirely unknown. This is glaringly evi- 

 denced by the fact that the Chinese commission engaged in working up 

 the "English and Chinese Standard Dictionary," published by the 

 Shanghai Commercial Press, in 1908, is not even acquainted with their 

 own Chinese name for the stone, and speaks of it as a substance entirely 

 foreign to their country; their definition of turquois (Vol. II, p. 2442) is 

 "a Persian gem of a greenish-blue color, etc., first known to Europe 

 through Turkey," and the same translated literally into Chinese, 

 without giving the proper Chinese term for the stone. Traders who have 

 come in contact with Tibetans or Mongols or even settled among these 

 peoples are certainly acquainted with it, and may even be induced to 

 wear a turquois button, but a "barbarous" odor is always attached to 

 it, and it seldom enters the ornaments of a self-respecting Chinese 

 woman. 



Besides the Hon. W. W. Rockhill, S. Wells Williams ^ seems to 

 be the only author to mention turquoises as known to the Chinese. 

 It is somewhat hard to understand how other careful observers could 



1 It follows therefrom that the knowledge of the turquois in China cannot be very 

 old, and this conclusion will be confirmed by our historical inquiry. 



2 The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I, p. 310 (New York, 1901). 



