a system of weights and measures
had to be devised. Huang-ti's successors, Shau-hau, Chuan-hue, and
Ti-k'u, were less prominent, though each of them had their particular
merits.

_The Model Emperors._--Most of the stories regarding the "Three
Emperors" are told in comparatively late records. The _Shu-king_,
sometimes described as the "Canon of History," our oldest source of
pre-Confucian history, supposed to have been edited by Confucius
himself, knows nothing of Fu-hi, Shoen-nung and Huang-ti; but it begins
by extolling the virtues of the emperor _Yau_ and his successor
_Shun_. Yau and Shun are probably the most popular names in Chinese
history as taught in China. Whatever good qualities may be imagined of
the rulers of a great nation have been heaped upon their heads; and
the example of their lives has at all times been held up by
Confucianists as the height of perfection in a sovereign's character.
Yau, whose reign has been placed by the fictitious standard chronology
of the Chinese in the years 2357-2258, and about 200 years later by
the less extravagant "Annals of the Bamboo Books," is represented as
the patron of certain astronomers who had to watch the heavenly
bodies; and much has been written about the reputed astronomical
knowledge of the Chinese in this remote period. Names like Deguignes,
Gaubil, Biot and Schlegel are among those of the investigators. On the
other side are the sceptics, who maintain that later editors
interpolated statements which could have been made only with the
astronomical knowledge possessed by their own contemporaries.
According to an old legend, Shun banished "the four wicked ones" to
distant territories. One of these bore the name _T'au-t'ie_, i.e.
"Glutton"; called also San-miau. _T'au-t'ie_ is also the name of an
ornament, very common on the surface of the most ancient bronze
vessels, showing the distorted face of some ravenous animal. The
San-miau as a tribe are said to have been the forefathers of the
Tangutans, the Tibetans and the Miau-tz'i in the south-west of China.
This legend may be interpreted as indicating that the non-Chinese
races in the south-west have come to their present seats by migration
from Central China in remote antiquity. During Yau's reign a
catastrophe reminding one of the biblical deluge threatened the
Chinese world. The emperor held his minister of works, Kun,
responsible for this misfo