DOMAIN III. ARGILLACEOUS. 



Du Halde, in his description of China, men- 

 tions that the district of Tay-tong-fu, belonging 

 Yu-she. to Shan-si, furnishes the most beautiful Yu-she, 

 which that author, in the confused mineralogy of 

 the time, calls a kind of white jasper. He adds, 

 that it resembles agate, is transparent, and some- 

 times appears spotted. 



Goez, who travelled to Tibet in 1602, in de- 

 scribing Yarkand, the capital of the kingdom of 

 Kasgar, in Little Bucharia, mentions, that a com- 

 modity, particularly acceptable in China, was a 

 kind of marble or jasper, found in Kasgar*. 

 " The king of Katay buys it at a great price ; and 

 what he leaves, the merchants sell to others at 

 exceeding great rates. Of it they make vessels, 

 ornaments for garments, and girdles, with other 

 toys, whereon they engrave leaves, flowers, and 

 other figures. The Chinese call it Tushe-\. There 

 are two kinds; one more precious, like thick 

 flints, which are found by diving in the river 

 Kotan, not far from the City Royal: the other 

 meaner sort is digged out of quarries, and sawed 

 into slabs above two ells in breadth. The hill 

 where they are dug, called Konsanghi Kasho, 



* Green's Voyages, iv. 645. 



f In the original Tusce, a mistake, no doubt, for Yu-she, the 

 word used by Du Halde. There seems great reason to infer, that 

 the pocula murkina of the ancients were of this substance. 



