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[[underline]] Chapter VIII. [[/underline]]  160.

found in many collections of Chinese bronzes.  Our informants also stated that on the floor, directly north of the doorway (whether in the antechamber or in the main chamber behind it was not clear) they had found a bronze tripod of some sort; while at the sides (against the walls?) had stood earthen vessels.  They had also found bronze mirrors, and in some kind of receptacle (apparently one of the jars), hundreds of copper cash.
  In the earth near the northwestern corner of the vault, 1 foot, 5 inches above the floor level, we ourselves found two fragments of bronze, apparently belonging to a small bowl.  Two feet from the western wall and one foot above the floor level were the badly rusted remains of a single-edged knife blade of iron, perhaps (to judge from its position) dropped by an ancient looter.
  Near the center of the tomb we found a little gilt-bronze figure of a bear about 2 1/2 inches high---one of the supports or "feet", our men told us, of the bronze tripod just mentioned and to which it had originally been attached by rivets.  The vessel itself the looters seem to have smashed with that cheerful and wanton destructiveness so characteristic of the Chinese peasant.  This use of bear figures as supports for bronze vessels is known to have been a  practice in Han times; it seems to have been connected in some way with a cult of that animal which formerly existed in northern China (see pp. 128 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]]).
  Later on we purchased from one of the looters an earthenware model of a stove of Han type (pl. [[strikethrough]] LXXXIII) [[/strikethrough]] ^[[29, fig. 1)]] and retaining traces of glaze; this the man stated, pretty surely with truth, that he had found in the tomb of the Wang Fên Wa.  Other objects which he and his companions had unearthed there had been sold and dispersed beyond recall.  All our men agreed in saying that the tomb had been broken open and plundered on at