1 70 Voyage of the Novara. 



while, just as in the Russian reckoning-board, eacli row 

 represents a value ten-fold greater or less with reference to 

 the two arms adjoining it on either side. On the Chinese 

 board the number of cross wii^es is not always the same, but 

 depends upon the extent of the calculations intended to be 

 made upon it.* 



Accordingly when a Chinese wishes to make a calculation 

 upon his reckoning-board, he lays it crosswise before him, with 



the large compartment next himself, pushes the beads of the 

 two divisions to the edge of the frame, whence, as the process 

 of calculation may require, he shifts them into the middle 

 against the partition-wire, or pushes them back again. In 



* Among the valuable contributions of the Russian Embassy to Pekin, respecting 

 China, its people, its religion, its political institutions, its social peculiarities, &c., 

 there is one long and very copious treatise upon the Chinese reckoning-board, and 

 the method of using it. See the German translation of the work by Dr. Karl Abel, 

 and F. T. Mecklenburg. Berlin, F. Heinicke, 1856, vol. i. p. 295. 



