which comprise two red centipedes—­one live and one roasted—­must be put into a mortar and pounded up together either on the 5th of the 5th moon, the 9th of the 9th moon, or the 8th of the 12th moon, in some place quite away from women, fowls, and dogs.  Pills made from the paste produced are to be swallowed one by one without mastication.  The preparation of this deadly Ku poison is described in the last chapter but one of Section III. in the following words:—­

“Take a quantity of insects of all kinds and throw them into a vessel of any kind; cover them up and let a year pass away before you look at them again.  The insects will have killed and eaten each other until there is only one survivor, and this one is Ku.”

In the next chapter we are informed that spinach eaten with tortoise is poison, as also is shell-fish eaten with venison; that death frequently results from drinking pond-water which has been poisoned by snakes, from drinking water which has been used for flowers, or tea which has stood uncovered through the night, from eating the flesh of a fowl which has swallowed a centipede, and wearing clothes which have been soaked with perspiration and dried in the sun.  Finally,

“A case is recorded of a man who tied his victim’s hands and feet, and forced into his mouth the head of a snake, applying fire at the same time to its tail.  The snake jumped down the man’s throat and passed into his stomach, but at the inquest held over the body no traces of wounds were found to which death could be attributed.  Such a crime, however, may be detected by examination of the bones which, from the head downwards, will be found entirely of a bright red colour, caused by the dispersion of the blood; and moreover, the more the bones are scraped away, the brighter in colour do they become.”

It is difficult to speak of such a book as “Instructions to Coroners” with anything like becoming gravity, and yet it is one of the most widely-read and highly-esteemed works in China; so much so, that native scholars frequently throw it in the teeth of foreigners as one of their many repertories of real wonder-working science, equal to anything that comes from the West, if only foreigners would take the trouble to consult it.  To satisfy our own curiosity on the subject we bought a copy and translated it from beginning to end; but our readers will perhaps be able to determine its scientific value from the few quotations given above, and agree with us that it would hardly be worth while to learn Chinese for the pleasure or profit to be derived from reading “Instructions to Coroners” in the original character.

CHRISTIANITY