Chinese ancient bronzes. Some of the bronzes in the American Museimi are 3000 years 

 old. 'The "flower vase of a hundred rings" represents the Sung dynasty, 960-H26 A. D. 



few years. The days of antiquity which once formed tlie source of a deKght- 

 ful object-lesson for the ethnologist have thoroughly vanished, and the 

 process of modernization is pervading all departments of activity. In this 

 state of affairs, we are bound to raise the cjuestion, what is the present 

 significance of ethnological collections made in China a decade ago? Nobody 

 competent to judge will hesitate to say that the same importance is due to 

 them as to collections secured in Japan before the era of the restoration. 

 A scholar who recently tried to make a collection in China wrote to me 

 on his return to Europe a short while ago: "You deserve congratulation 

 for having seized the right opportunity; it is impossible to do at the present 

 time what could be done ten years ago." 



It should be borne in mind that the ethnology of China is a subject of 

 greater complexity than that of primitive groups of peoples, and that the 

 extent of a country equaling the United States in area tends to set a well- 

 limited purpose before the eyes of the individual explorer. Something like 

 a complete collection from China does not exist anywhere nor is it ever 

 likely to exist in any museum; but there is ample reason for satisfaction, 

 that we now discover in our collections many series of objects which exist 

 no longer in China. 



The Chinese collection in the American Museum illustrates the home 

 industries and the social life of the common Chinese people of ten years ago 

 and represents ('hina as a living culture organism. The collection was made 

 according to a scheme similar to the one which an ethnologist would follow 

 up in the study of a primitive group. However simple and plausible this 

 may sound, the fact remains that such a plan had never before been carried 



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