Note 9 — XI.—SUPERSTITIONS REGARDING THE POWERS OF NATURE.

Records of sudden fissures in the earth (due it may be safely alleged to volcanic action) are plentiful enough in Chinese annals, but are, of course, always accompanied by other portentous occurrences. A favourite legend relates to the emission of a shên or chiao 蛟 which eventually becomes a dragon. The fissures are due to its efforts to escape from the earth’s interior. “The Shên is popularly described as an embryotic dragon, or a dragon in the first stage of existence. It is formed by the perspiration of that animal falling from the sky upon terrestrial beings. Animals thus affected become Shên, sink into the ground and remain there, some say thirty, some an hundred years, emerging in heavy rains as a Kiau.”9 Other legends record the emission of fragrant vapours from the rents thus made, the issue of blood from springs in place of water, &c. These latter occurrences may have been due to a gush of water through oxide of iron beds, but Chinese records are too unscientific to allow aught save conjecture in this respect. Trees also are recorded as giving forth blood, an appearance due in all probability to the presence of minute insects in exudations from the bark.