“Take three fowl’s-eggs, and write at the big end of each the word warm, at the small end the word beautiful.  Then throw them singly to the spot where the fire is burning brightest, uttering all the time ‘fooshefahrun, fooshefahrun.’  The fire will then go out.”  There are several other methods, but perhaps this one will be found to answer the purpose.

Further on we find a most practicable way for pedestrians of discovering the right direction to pursue at a cross road.  “Carry with you a live tortoise, and when you come to a cross road and do not know which one to choose, put down the tortoise and follow it.  Thus you will not go wrong.”  For people who are afraid of seeing bogies at night, the following is recommended:—­“With the middle finger of the right hand trace on the palm of the left hand the words I am a devil, and close your hand up tight.  You will then be able to travel without fear.”  Sea-sickness may be prevented by drinking the drippings from a bamboo punt-pole mixed with boiling water, or by inserting a lump of burnt mortar from a stove into the hair, without letting anybody know it is there; also by writing the character earth on the palm of the hand previous to going on board ship.  Ivory may be cleaned to look like new by using the whey of bean-curd, and rice may be protected from weevils and maggots by inserting the shell of a crab in the place where it is kept.  The presence of bad air in wells may be detected by letting a fowl’s feather drop down; if it falls straight, the air is pure; if it circles round and round, poisonous.  Danger may be averted by throwing in a quantity of hot vinegar before descending.  A fire may be kept alight from three to five days without additional fuel by merely putting a walnut among the live ashes; and a method is also given to make a candle burn many hours with hardly any perceptible decrease in size.

We close Dr Wang’s “New Collection of Tried Prescriptions” with mingled feelings of admiration and regret:  admiration, not indeed for the genius of its author, or any new light which may have been let in upon us during our study of this section of the “mental oasis” of Chinese literature, but for the indomitable energy and skill of those who have helped to emancipate us from similar trammels of ignorance and folly; regret, that a nation which carries within its core the germs of a transcendent greatness should still remain sunk in the lowest depths of superstitious gloom.

LOAN SOCIETIES