to see an enemy enter, and take measures accordingly.

Lap-dogs and cage-birds were kept as pets; 'wonks,' the _huang kou_,
or 'yellow dog,' were guards of houses and street scavengers. Aquaria
with goldfish were often to be seen in the houses of the upper and
middle classes, the gardens and courtyards of which usually contained
rockeries and artistic shrubs and flowers.

Whiskers were never worn, and moustaches and beards only after forty,
before which age the hair grew, if at all, very scantily. Full,
thick beards, as in the West, were practically never seen, even on
the aged. Snuff-bottles, tobacco-pipes, and fans were carried by both
sexes. Nails were worn long by members of the literary and leisured
classes. Non-Manchu women and girls had cramped feet, and both Manchu
and Chinese women used cosmetics freely.

Industrial Institutions

While the men attended to farm-work, women took care of the
mulberry-orchards and silkworms, and did spinning, weaving, and
embroidery. This, the primitive division of labour, held throughout,
though added to on both sides, so that eventually the men did most
of the agriculture, arts, production, distribution, fighting, etc.,
and the women, besides the duties above named and some field-labour,
mended old clothes, drilled and sharpened needles, pasted tin-foil,
made shoes, and gathered and sorted the leaves of the tea-plant. In
course of time trades became highly specialized--their number being
legion--and localized, bankers, for instance, congregating in Shansi,
carpenters in Chi Chou, and porcelain-manufacturers in Jao Chou,
in Kiangsi.

As to land, it became at an early age the property of the sovereign,
who farmed it out to his relatives or favourites. It was arranged on
the _ching_, or 'well' system--eight private squares round a ninth
public square cultivated by the eight farmer families in common for the
benefit of the State. From the beginning to the end of the Monarchical
Period tenure continued to be of the Crown, land being unallodial, and
mostly held in clans or families, and not entailed, the conditions
of tenure being payment of an annual tax, a fee for alienation,
and money compensation for personal services to the Government,
generally incorporated into the direct tax as scutage. Slavery,
unknown in the earliest times, existed as a recognized institution
during the whole of the Monarchical Period.

Production was chiefly confined to human and animal labour, mac