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[[underlined]] Chapter II. [[/underlined]] 33.

other name for the water-buffalo or [[underlined]] shui niu [[/underlined]] 水牛; for in the commentary to the [[underlined]] Shih Chi [[/underlined]] 史記 chapter 117 (fol. 6-b in my edition) we learn that "the [[underlined]] ssu [[/underlined]] resembles the [[underlined]] shui niu [[/underlined]] ". 
I have discussed the probable identity of the animal called the [[underlined]] ssu [/underlined]] in [[underlined]] The China Journal [[/underlined]], June, 1933: C. W. Bishop, "Rhinoceros and wild Ox in Ancient China;" pp. 322-330.
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a material which would naturally suggest itself as suited for the manufacture of coffins, we perhaps have here a development of an older and simpler usage, when hides were used merely as wrappings or covering for a corpse. Of such an earlier practice we have what seems to be a recollection in more than one passage in the ancient Chinese literature. It appears to have been retained in all its primitive simplicity by certain groups of the Miao of southern China down to quite recent times [[superscript]](19) [[/superscript]]. Thus all things considered, this ab-
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(19) 
[[underlined]] Cf. [[/underlined]] A. R. Colquhoun, [[underlined]] Across Chrysê, [[/underlined]] Lond., 1883, 2 vols.; ref. to vol. II, p. 366.
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sence of a coffin would seem to support an earlier rather than a later date for the interment at Hsin Chêng Hsien.

[[underlined]] Our Return to Chêng Chou [[/underlined]]
After extricating the mandible, I continued working with my pocket-knife in an effort to free the rest of the skull from the earth in which it was so solidly embedded. While so doing, I was careful to examine the oral cavity for any piece of jade or other material which might have been inserted in it prior to burial; but it contained only earth, which had filled it completely, even to the interdental spaces.
Lack of time and of proper tools prevented the completion of my task; for the soil had with the lapse of centuries become exceedingly hard. So I persuaded the officer in charge of the excavation to