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cocoon than the silk cocoon which is raised in Hsi-yin Ts'un at present. It was found near the bottom of the pit, and could not be a later intrusion, because the soil there was quite undisturbed; nor could it have been accidentally spin there by a wild worm, because it was sharply cut. When it was first brought to me, I immediately realized its significance, and decided to go into the matter in detail. However, nothing similar to it was found again. Local traditions seem to indicate a great antiquity for silk industry in this region. Silk industry still is a flourishing business in Hsia Hsien, but it represents the combinations of several strange factors which make it interesting to an ethnologist. I was told that the men who now carry on this industry in Hsia Hsien all come from Honan; the major supply of raw silk also comes from Honan, because the native production is very insignificant; and what is even more surprising is that very little silk in its finished form is sold in Hsia Hsien or anywhere near it. This has been so from time immemorial according to the local tradition. The best market for the silk goods manufactured in Hsia Hsien at present is Shensi and Kansu. So we have here the localization of an industry neither because of its geographical propinquity to the raw material and market, nor because of its skilled workmanship. It is outstandingly an economic waste. It seems to me that the only way to account for this incongruous phenomenon is to take it as a 'survival in culture'. Thus this apparent economic waste may serve as indirect evidence of the very early existence of a flourishing silk industry in this region.

It would be of course "imprudent", as Dr. Anderson said, to assert the existence of sericulture in aeneolithic China on the