As a rule, his succinctly-stated matters of fact may be regarded as thoroughly reliable. When a Chinese annalist states that in the year 990 there was a serious famine at Weihaiwei, the reader may take it for granted that the famine undoubtedly occurred, however uninstructive the fact may be in the opinion of those who live nearly a thousand years later. What is apt to strike one as inexplicable is the occasional appearance, in a list of prosaic details which may be accepted as generally reliable, of some statement which suggests that the compiler must have suddenly lost control of his senses. For instance, we read in the _Wên-têng Chih_ or Annals of the district in which the greater part of Weihaiwei is situated, that in the year which corresponds with 1539 there were disastrous floods, and that in the autumn a large dragon suddenly made its appearance in a private dwelling. "It burst the walls of the house," says the chronicler, "and so got away; and then there was a terrific hailstorm." Why such startling absurdities are introduced into a narrative that is generally devoid of the least imaginative sparkle, may be easily understood when we remember that such animals as dragons, phœnixes and unicorns and many other strange creatures were believed in (or at least their existence was not questioned) by educated Chinese up to a quite recent date; and the writer of the _Wên-têng Chih_, when noting down remarkable occurrences as they were brought to his notice, saw no reason whatever why he should doubt the appearance of the dragon any more than he should doubt the reality of the floods or the hailstorm. That the dragon episode could not have happened because dragons did not exist was no more likely to occur to the honest Chinese chronicler than a doubt about the real existence of a personal Devil and a fiery Hell was likely to beset a pious Scottish Presbyterian of the eighteenth century, or than a disbelief in the creation of the world in six days in the year 4004 B.C. was likely to disturb the minds of the pupils of Archbishop Ussher.