called by the Chinese niu-êrh, or "buffalo," from its awkward shape, feeds on the inner lining of the nest.

At the end of April the nests are collected from the trees and are carried to the town of Tê-ch'ang. Thither at the same season come porters, often to the number of ten thousand, to transport the embryo insects to the district of Chia-ting Fu, where the wax is produced. Two hundred miles separate this locality from the valley of Chiench'ang, and the road leads over a mountainous and difficult country. To each porter is apportioned a load consisting of about sixty packets of nests, and weighing about nine hundred and sixty ounces. In an almost endless string the men start off on their journey, and travel only by night, in order to prevent the premature development of the insects by the heat of the sun. On arriving at their haltingplaces at early dawn, the men spread out their burdens in cool and sheltered spots, where they are allowed to remain until night again gives the signal for departure. In spite of all this care, the nests suffer loss by the escape of the more precocious insects from their enclosures, and it is generally reckoned that each packet loses an ounce in weight in the course of the transit. On their arrival in the district of Chia-ting Fu, the nests are made up into packets of from twenty to thirty, which are sewn up in the leaves of the wood-oil tree with rice straw. With the same material the packets are tied to the boughs and twigs of the paila shu, or "white wax tree.' e." The packets are pierced with a coarse needle so as to afford easy egress for the insects when they arrive at maturity. Through

these holes the insects crawl on to the boughs and twigs of the tree, which shortly develop a white coating resembling "very much sulphate of quinine, or a covering of snow." So soon as this deposit becomes visible the farmer belabours the trunk of the tree with a thick club to rid the nests of the beetles which still cling to them. At the end of a hundred days the deposit is considered complete. The branches are then cut off, and so much of the wax as can be collected from them by hand is put into iron cauldrons of boiling water. Under the influence of this heat the wax melts and rises to the surface. It is then skimmed off and put into moulds, which give it the shape in which it appears in the market. The boughs, to which in ordinary cases some wax still adheres, are then thrown into the pot, and the wax derived from this process suffers to the extent of being brown in colour, and so is of secondary value to the merchant. Intent on gaining every atom of the wax, the manufacturer finally collects the dead insects from the bottom of the cauldron, and, having extracted by pressure the last particle of their produce, throws them into the pigs' trough.

In 1884 four hundred and fifty-four tons of this material, valued at about £95,000, were exported from Szech'uan to Shanghai. Since that time, however, a decline has set in. The importation of kerosene oil has seriously affected the position of the wax in the market. A considerable traffic, however, is still maintained, and although the army of coolies for the transportation of the insects is now considerably diminished, troops of them are still to be seen every spring wending their weary

way over the mountains which separate the valley of Chien-ch'ang from Chia-ting Fu.*

One other item of export derives an interest from the nature of the demand as well as that of the supply. At the time that chignons were worn by European ladies, the demand for human hair circulated all over the civilized world, and even reached the markets of far Cathay. The ports of Swatow and Canton were those from which this article of commerce was mainly exported. By the customs' return for Swatow we learn that it first became an article of merchandise in the year 1873, when 141 piculs, valued at 2904 taels, were shipped to Europe. With the demand the supply increased rapidly, so that in 1875 sixty tons of hair were despatched from Swatow. The manner in which the material was collected illustrates the aptitude for trade and the thrifty nature possessed by Chinamen. If reports are to be believed, the supply obtained in Europe is procured by buying the flowing locks of indigent peasant women; but in China the large quantities offered for sale are collected only from the sweepings of barbers' shops. With a change in the style of coiffure worn by ladies came a decrease in this branch of trade. But of late years a further demand has arisen, where from does not appear, and in 1892 human hair to the value of 357,937 taels was shipped abroad. The hair when collected is carefully combed into long tails measuring from two and a half to three feet, and is paid for by the wholesale dealers at a rate of about thirty taels per picul.

* "Three Years in Western China," by Alexander Hosie.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHINESE ARCHITECTURE.

BEFORE entering into a description of a Chinese household it is necessary that something should be said of the Chinese house. We are all familiar with drawings of the quaint roofs with their upturned corners, which characterize the architecture of the country. The form at once suggests that, as is probably the case, this dominant style of building is a survival of the tent-dwellings of the Tartar peoples. It is said that when Jenghiz Khan, the founder of the Mongol dynasty, invaded China, in the thirteenth century, his followers, on possessing themselves of a city, reduced the houses to a still more exact counterpart of their origins by pulling down the walls, and leaving the roofs supported by the wooden pillars which commonly bear the entire weight of those burdens. What at once strikes the eye in the appearance of a Chinese city, even of the capital itself, is the invariable sameness in the style of building. Palaces and temples, public offices and dwelling-houses, are built on one constant model. No spire, no dome, no tower, rises to relieve the monotony of the scene, which is varied only, so far as the buildings are concerned, by the different coloured tiles-green,

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yellow, and brown-which indicate roughly the various uses which the buildings they cover are designed to serve, and by occasional pagodas, reminding us of the faith of the people. In his History of Indian and Eastern Architecture," the late Mr. Fergusson suggested, as a reason for this absence of variety, the fact that "the Chinese never had either a dominant priesthood or an hereditary nobility. The absence of the former class is important, because it is to sacred art that architecture has owed its highest inspiration, and sacred art is never so strongly developed as under the influence of a powerful and splendid hierarchy. In the same manner the want of an hereditary nobility is equally unfavourable to domestic architecture of a durable description. Private feuds and private wars were till lately unknown, and hence there are no fortalices, or fortified mansions, which by their mass and solidity give such a marked character to a certain class of domestic edifices in the West." There are, however, other factors which have operated even more powerfully than these two in producing this monotonous conformity to one model, and that is the sterility of the imaginative powers of the Chinese people, and the steadfast conservatism of the race. Just as the arts and sciences, which in the dim past they acquired from more cultured races in Western Asia, have remained crystallized in the stage in which they received them, and just as their written language has not, like that of Ancient Egypt and Assyria, advanced beyond a primitive phonetic stage, so their knowledge of architecture has been perpetuated without the smallest symptom of development or the least spark