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3.

this quaint practice on the basis of the finds from Yin-hau will be given.

1.  The Cattle and the Tortoise.

Regarding the practice of scapulimancy, there is one obvious observation that can be readily made:  that is, it is associated with some kind of ruminant animals, especially of [[underlined]] artiodactyla [[/underlined]] suborder, either in a semi-domesticable stage or completely domesticated.Kroeber observed that this custom in a later stage formed a cultural complex with the domesticated sheep, and "was then diffused almost as far as this animal".  The case of Yin-hsu, the scapulae used are almost exclusively those of the cattle.  This has led some students to think that the Chinese people of this period were still in a nomadic stage, depending chiefly upon the breeding of this animal as a basis of their economic organization.  We have no space here to examine the theory in detail, but here can be little doubt that cattle must have played a very important role in the economical life of the people of this time.  There is, in fact, a very old tradition that one of the early ancestors of the ruling house of the Shang Dynasty, Wang Hai ([[Chinese characters]]), is the man who first domesticated the cattle.  Biologist are as yet not prepared to tell us to what extent the Chinese cattle are related to the stocks of the West. Pending their examination of these recoveries, it is difficult to state how the Chinese first got their domesticated cattle.

Althou less related to the economic life, the case of the tortoise is even more interesting from other standpoints.  Dr. C. Ping of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, who has examined the specimen of a complete tortoise shell from Yin-hsu, the only complete one so far discovered, has expressed the opinion that it is altogether a new species which has never been described before.  He