undomcsticated mongrel curs. The shops and houses are built of light inflammable material, and a row of earthen pots of water disposed along the roof of each tenement is the sole precaution adopted to prevent the ravages of fire.
I am indebted to Mr. W. F. Mayers, the well-known Chinese scholar, for the translation of the sign-boards of Physic Street, and for the interesting note which follows on Schroffing dollars.
The signboards may be taken as fair examples of the street literature of China, showing the national tendency of the shopkeepers to introduce their commonest wares by some high-flown classical phrase, having, so far as I can see, no reference whatever to the contents of the shop. Tien Yih (Celestial Advantage), for example, offers a thoroughly terrestrial advantage to customers in the shape of covers and cushions ; and why, one might be tempted to ask, should swallows' nests be a "Sign of the Eternal?"
These phrases are, however, simply intended as the signs, or names by which each shop is known, as with us in olden times, we used to have the "Golden Fleece," "The Anchor," and the quaint signs of our wayside inns.
Kien Ki Hao. — The sign of the 'symbol Kien (Heaven). Hwei-chow ink, pencils, and writing requisites. Chang Tsi Tang (Chang of the family branch designated Tsi). Wax-cased pills of select manufacture. Tien Yih (Celestial advantage). Table-covers, chair-covers, cushions for chairs, and divans for sale. Tien Yih Shen (Celestial advantage combined with attention). Shop for the sale of cushions and rattan mats. Yung Ki (sign of the Eternal) Swallows' Nests. Money-schroffing taught here.'
K'ing Wen T'ang.— The Mall of delight in Scholarship. Seals artistically engraved.
1 The art of " schroffing," or of detecting spurious coin, and of ascertaining the difference between dollars of various issues, is very extensively practised in China, and is studied as a profession by hundreds of young men, who find employment in banks and merchants' offices. The establishments where " schroffing " is taught, are well-known to be in direct communication with the counterfeiters of Mexican dollars and other coin, and it has often been remarked that the existence of sthroffs and of false money are mutually indispensable to each other. If the amount of counterfeit coin in circulation were less, the necessity for a multitude of schroffs would not be so severely felt as at present ; and if the establishments where schroffage is taught did not exist, the counterfeiters would lose their principal means of passing false money into circulation.
