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which he himself had excavated inside the city walls. Although he had long been interested in early pottery he could not tell me of the location of any kilns which must have existed in the vicinity at least as far back as the Sung dynasty. He told me that it was his custom to walk out in the Spring when the farmers were building their dykes and clearing refuse from their ditches, and to obtain from them specimens of ancient pottery which had been found. His most recent acquisitions were a complete model of a barn-yard of the Han type, and a bowl of common Sung white ware, both of which had been taken from the earth in his presence. He told me that the whole region was extraordinarily rich in such finds.
When I spoke of my desire to visit the towns of Yu[umlaut]chow and Juchow, he told me that at present the government had quite lost its grip on those places. The Magistrates were no longer officials recognized in Peking, but were little better than robber chiefs who assumed the rank in defiance of the law. He knew that modern kilns were producing a blue ware at one or both of these places and thought it probable that excavation would bring to light the existence of [underline] Chun [umlaut] yao [underline] kilns of the Sung period.
With the [underline] Yamen [underline] secretary, I visited the Confucian temple where the Magistrate had deposited for safe keeping certain objects of antiquity which had been dug up in the neighborhood of been seized from persons endeavoring to make off with them. In this small collection was a fine full sized marble head of the T'ang dynasty and several smaller ones of the same period. The pottery included Han types and T'ang grave figurines. Two