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observations. If any one wishes to acquire a knowledge of Chinese
manners and customs, he will not want for books on the country, his
studies will rather be impeded by their enormous number, and often
enough by the inferior nature of their contents. Here I shall only
touch upon a single subject, because it especially interested me as
a mineralogist, namely, the stone-polishing works of Canton.

It is natural that in a country so populous and rich as China, in
which home and home life play so great a _role_, much money should
be spent on ornaments. We might therefore have expected that
precious stones cut and polished would be used here on a great
scale, but from what I saw at Canton, the Chinese appear to set much
less value on them than either the Hindoo or the European. It
appears besides as if the Chinese still set greater value on stones
with old "oriental polishing," _i.e._ with polished _rounded_
surfaces, than on stones formed according to the mode of polishing
now common in Europe with plane facets. Instead the Chinese have a
great liking for peculiar, often very well executed, carvings in a
great number of different kinds of stones, among which they set the
greatest value on nephrite, or, as they themselves call it, "Yii."
It is made into rings, bracelets, ornaments of all kinds, vases,
small vessels for the table, &c. In Canton there are numerous
lapidaries and merchants, whose main business is to make and sell
ornaments of this species of stone, which is often valued higher
than true precious stones. It was long so important an article of
commerce that the place where it was found formed the goal of
special caravan roads which entered China by the Yii gate. Amber
also appears to have a high value put upon it, especially pieces
which inclose insects. Amber is not found in China, but is brought
from Europe, is often fictitious, and contains large Chinese beetles
with marks of the needles on which they have been impaled. Other
less valuable minerals, native or foreign, are also used, among
others, compact varieties of talc or soap-stone and of pyrophyllite.
But works executed in these minerals do not fetch a price at all
comparable to that of nephrite. In the same shop in which I
purchased pieces of nephrite carefully placed in separate boxes, I
found at the bottom of a dusty chest, along with pieces of quartz
and old refuse of various kinds, large crystals, some of which were
exceedingly well formed, of tra