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                                                       94
SHANGHAI AND HANKOW

[[underlined]]SHANGHAI[[/underlined]]
The stop at Shanghai proved fruitful in many suggestions concerning the future work of the School. Aside from visits to many of the native dealers' shops and time spent in examination of their collections, I made a point of meeting such foreigners as might be interested in our project.
   While the foreign community of Shanghai live there almost exclusively for the specific purposes of trade or missionary work, they include not a few persons actively interested in the history and arts of China. This is evinced by the fact that they maintain the headquarters of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, which has a growing library and a small museum. Several of them have formed collections of objects of art and by reading and by communication with Chinese scholars have learned much about Asiatic art.
    Through the kindness of Mrs. Ayscough, Librarian of the North China Branch, herself a student of Chinese art, I was able to meet the other foreigners interested in our various subjects.
[[underlined]]"ORACLE BONES"[[/underlined]]   Dr. Couling, Secretary of the North China Branch gave me the first hints which later led to successful investigations into the matter of the inscribed "oracle bones" of Honan Province summarized in another chapter and to be fully developed in an appendix. He also allowed me to examine a unique collection of stone implements (probably neolithic) found by himself and bought from farmers in the Northern part