also said to come from a State in the Cashmeer region.  K’ang-hi’s seventeenth-century dictionary is more explicit:  it states that Termed produces this ore, but that ’the true sort comes from Persia, and looks like gold, but on being heated it turns carnation, and not black.’  As the Toba Emperors added 1000 new characters to the Chinese stock, we may assume this one to have been invented, for the specific purpose indicated.’” (E.H.  PARKER, Asiatic Quart.  Rev., Jan., 1904, pp. 135-6.) Prof.  Parker adds the following note, l.c., p. 149:  “Since writing the above, I have come across a passage in the ’History of the Sung Dynasty’ (chap. 490, p. 17) stating that an Arab junk-master brought to Canton in A.D. 990, and sent on thence to the Chinese Emperor in Ho Nan, ‘one vitreous bottle of tutia.’  The two words mean ‘metropolis-father,’ and are therefore without any signification, except as a foreign word.  According to Yule’s notes (I., p. 126), tutia, or dudha, in one of its forms was used as an eye-ointment or collyrium.”

XXII., pp. 127-139.  The Province of Tonocain “contains an immense plain on which is found the ARBRE SOL, which we Christians call the Arbre Sec; and I will tell you what it is like.  It is a tall and thick tree, having the bark on one side green and the other white; and it produces a rough husk like that of a chestnut, but without anything in it.  The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side, where you find trees within about ten miles distance.”

In a paper published in the Journal of the R. As.  Soc., Jan., 1909, Gen. Houtum-Schindler comes to the conclusion, p. 157, that Marco Polo’s tree is not the “Sun Tree,” but the Cypress of Zoroaster; “Marco Polo’s arbre sol and arbre seul stand for the Persian dirakht i sol, i.e. the cypress-tree.  If General Houtum Schindler had seen the third edition of the Book of Ser Marco Polo_, I., p. 113, he would have found that I read his paper of the J.R.A.S., of January, 1898.”

XXII., p. 132, l. 22.  The only current coin is millstones.

Mr. T.B.  CLARKE-THORNHILL wrote to me in 1906:  “Though I can hardly imagine that there can be any connection between the Caroline Islands and the ‘Amiral d’Outre l’Arbre Sec,’ still it may interest you to know that the currency of ‘millstones’ existed up to a short time ago, and may do so still, in the island of Yap, in that group.  It consisted of various-sized discs of quartz from about 6 inches to nearly 3 feet in diameter, and from 1/2 an inch to 3 or 4 inches in thickness.”

XXV., p. 146.

OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Regarding the reduction of the Ismaelites, the Yuaen Shi tells us that in 1222, on his way back after the taking of Nishapur, Tuli, son of Genghis, plundered the State of Mu-la-i, captured Herat, and joined his father at Talecan.  In 1229 the King of Mu-lei presented himself at the Mongol Court....  The following statement is also found in the Mongol Annals:  “In the seventh moon [1252] the Emperor ordered K’i-t’ah-t’eh Pu-ha to carry war against the Ma-la-hi.’” (E.H.  PARKER, Asiatic Quart.  Rev., Jan., 1904, p. 136.)