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appropriations of the provinces, and receiving and distributing the various articles with which some taxes are paid, as grain, manufactured goods, and other kinds of produce. It is worth mention that a subordinate bureau of this Board compiles lists of Manchu girls from among whom the inmates of the imperial harem are selected. The connection between such a function and the duties of a board of revenue is derived from the fact that the allowances and outfits of these girls have to be controlled by the bureau.

The third Board is that of Rites (Li-po). Etiquette enters so largely into official and private life in China that the duties of this Board are wide and important. There are five kinds of ritual observance those of propitiation, of conciliation, of hospitality, of mourning, and of military matters which are all discussed and directed by the Board with due proclamation to the people at large. Questions of procedure, of literary distinctions, of religious honours, of tribute, of banquets, of bounties, of court etiquette, of official costumes, of equipages, of insignia of rank, of ceremonies connected with intercourse between men of title or high status, of forms of inter-state communication, of everything relat- ing to literary examination or to the establishment of Government schools and academies, all these lie within the Board's province. The Board includes a bureau which superintends the rites observed in worshipping deities and spirits