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xvi (5) 選句 Hsüan chü. Very short excerpts of peculiar literary excellence, which have an epigrammatic turn or otherwise deserve to be singled out and handed down as household words.

(6) 紀事 Chi shih. Minor historical and other passages not deemed of sufficient importance to find a place in the Hui k'ao. A multifarious collection of notes, often of an anecdotal character.

(7) 雜錄 Tsa lu. Miscellaneous extracts from the Classics and from general literature which (a) lack authenticity and therefore cannot be included in the Hui k'ao; (b) treat the subject in a cavilling and one-sided spirit, and are therefore not suitable for the Tsung lun; (c) are not sufficiently polished to be admitted among the I wên.

(8) 外編 Wai pien. Passages of fantastic, extravagant or allegorical import derived from Buddhist and Taoist literature, or other schools of heterodox philosophy.

These divisions, of course, do not all occur in every subhead, but in the majority of cases one will find at least Nos. 1 or 2, 4, 6 and 7. Thanks largely to this method of classification, the T'u Shu will be found at least as easy to consult as the T'ai P'ing Yü Lan or the Yü Hai. Another improvement contributing to the same result is the detailed synopsis of contents prefixed to every chüan, in which all the works or authors quoted from are set forth, with further indication of chapters and illustrations.

No descriptive account of the T'u Shu Chi Ch'êng would be quite complete without some mention of the illustrations, which, as may be gathered from the title of the encyclopaedia, were intended to form one of its distinctive features. The word 圖 includes not only pictures properly so called, but also maps and diagrams, all of which are profusely scattered throughout the work. Thus, section I contains star-maps and astronomical diagrams, III drawings of scientific instruments, VI geographical maps, VII pictures of nearly all the mountains described, and VIII sketches of the natives of various foreign countries. (It may be remarked that little-known or fabulous countries are those which are most liberally illustrated.) The 明倫 category affords no scope for pictorial representation, but when we come to section XVII, we find illustrations to some of the games, and diagrams under the subhead 星命 Astrology; in XVIII, miscellaneous deities are portrayed, and in XIX and XX nearly every animal and plant is accompanied by a picture, which often proves of no little help in the task of identification. Caution must be exercised, however, as these plates are sometimes not only crude in execution, but grotesquely at variance with the text. Under the heading Bear, for instance, not one of the three plates can be said to resemble the animal in question. In XXIV, inkslabs are depicted, in XXVIII, articles of clothing, in XXIX, an array of musical instruments. Various engines and implements of war are represented in XXX, and miscellaneous manufactured articles—vases, banners, insignia, etc.—in XXXII. The above is very far from being an exhaustive list of the illustrations in the T'u Shu, which if massed together would fill quite a collection of stout volumes. Just as there are no original articles written specially for this compilation, so the plates have been taken from a number of earlier works, among others the well-known illustrated encyclopaedia 三才圖會 San Ts'ai T'u Hui.

With regard now to the printing of the T'u Shu, perhaps the greatest typographical