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15.

The drilled cavities are circular, and the chiselled cavities are almond-shaped; this difference can be easily perceived.  The cavities on the plastrons are usually orderly arranged; on the scapulae, however, they are less so.  In certain cases, the cavity was first drilled into a round shape, then chiselled again across its diameter(Plate QX1).  The scorching was usually applied perpendicular to the chiselled line, so that, when cracking took place, at least two lines could be resulted.  The following figure shows a typical example of this sort. 

[[image: line drawing of front and back of a tortoise shell; labels 1, 2, 3, and 4 on left-side drawing; labels a and b on right-side drawing]] 
[[caption]]
Figure 12: Diagram showing the chiselling drilling and scorching of a tortoise shell and the corresponding cracks. 
1. Chiselled cavity. 
2. Drilled cavity. 
3. Thinnest part of the cavity. 
4. Where scorching is applied. 
a. Mid-line of the crack 
b. Side-line of the crack
[[/caption]]

How many cavities could be drilled and chiselled on one plate?  This obviously depend upon the size of the place and its general anatomy.  In some scapulae, the fossa are so thin that no cavities could be drilled on them without also perforating them.  So only the space near the margin were utilized. Frequently a long row of such scorched cavities are found along the margin.  Many of these marginal pieces were broken away from fossa and discovered as merely long slender pieces, which the native diggers have given a special name as, Ch'ang-t'iao ([[Chinese characters]]).  In early days these were taken as split pieces of thin [[strikethrough]]skin[[/strikethrough]] bone.  When the fossa is sufficiently thick, cavities were drilled almost all over.  The plastron is much more uniform in its thickness; so the number of cavities are more regularly distributed.  Still the size of the 

Transcription Notes:
jeni92127 reviewed 20 Sept 2017 - QX1 appears to have been edited by hand; 1 is subscript Chinese characters need to be added.