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111
CHANGTEFU
[[Underline]] "ORACLE BONES" [[/Underline]] 
When I called on Dr. Couling, Secretary of the North ^[[|]]China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, he had shown me some specimens of the inscribed "oracle bones" which had been appearing from Honan Province during the last few years. Sinologues have been unable to solve the problems suggested by these fragmentary inscriptions, though many characters can be deciphered. The period of the production of these inscribed bones is still in doubt, some scholars believing them to be as early as the Shang dynasty(B.C. 1766 - B.C. 1122) and others attributing them to the Chow period (B.C. 1122 - B.C. 249).
      Dr. Couling had sent a native scholar to Changte fu, in Honan province, the town where the finds were supposed to have been made, but he returned without finding further evidence concerning them or being able to establish their origin. I volunteered to stop at Changte, which was on my proposed route, to see what could be found out on the subject.
My material concerning this matter has not yet arrived from China and I shall leave the full consideration of it and citations from Chines texts to an appendix to this report, giving here only a summary of the results.
      When I reached Changte fu in the middle of April, I went first to the little local curio shops to see if they knew of any finds of oracle bones. I examined many specimens that they offered for sale, and was afterward able to prove some of these to be counterfeits. The local explanation of certain notched fragments among the inscribed bones was that they had been used