virtuous rulers and good government.
It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a
tortoise, and the features of the dragon and fish. Its colors and
streaming feathers are gorgeous with iridian sheen, combining the
splendors of the pheasant and the peacock. Its five colors symbolize the
cardinal virtues of uprightness of mind, obedience, justice, fidelity
and benevolence. The male bird _H[=o]_, and female _w[=o]_, by their
inseparable fellowship furnish the artist, poet and literary writer with
the originals of the ten thousand references which are found in Chinese
and its derived literatures. Of this mystic Phoenix a Chinese dictionary
thus gives description:

The Phoenix is of the essence of water; it was born in the
vermilion cave; it perches not but on the most beautiful of all
trees; it eats not but of the seed of the bamboo; its body is
adorned with the five colors; its song contains the five notes;
as it walks it looks around; as it flies hosts of birds follow
it.

Older than the elaborate descriptions of it and its representations in
art, the H[=o]-w[=o] is one of the creations of primitive Chinese
Animism.

The Kwei or Tortoise is not the actual horny reptile known to
naturalists and to common experience, but a spirit, an animated creature
that ages ago rose up out of the Yellow River, having on its carapace
the mystic writing out of which the legendary founder of Chinese
civilization deciphered the basis of moral teachings and the secrets of
the unseen. From this divine tortoise which conceived by thought alone,
all other tortoises sprang. In the elaboration of the myths and legends
concerning the tortoise we find many varieties of this scaly
incarnation. It lives a thousand years, hence it is emblem of longevity
in art and literature. It is the attendant of the god of the waters. It
has some of the qualities and energies of the dragon, it has the power
of transformation. In pictures and sculptures we are familiar with its
figure, often of colossal size, as forming the curb of a well, the base
of a monument or tablet. Yet, whatever its form in literature or art, it
is the later elaborated representation of ancient Animism which selected
the tortoise as one of the manifold incarnations or media of the myriad
spirits that populate the air.

Chief and leader of the four divinely constituted beasts is the Lung,
Japanese Ri[=o], or Dragon, which has the power of tr