In Weihaiwei, litigation arising directly or indirectly out of disputes concerning coffins is fairly common, owing to the fact that timber is scarce and good coffins correspondingly expensive. The rights of ownership over a single tree or a group of trees are for this reason hotly contested, though the intention of using the timber for coffin-making is not always mentioned in the pleadings. One T'sung P'ei-yü made his complaint thus: "I was one of three sons. When the family property was divided between the three of us by our father's instructions, my eldest brother was given the house in which we had been brought up. But in the garden there was a fir-tree, and our father, before he died, specially declared that this tree was to be regarded as mine, in order that I might make myself a coffin out of it. The village headman can bear witness to this, and all the neighbours know that what 1 say is true. This happened seven years ago, and no one contested my claim to the tree until the tenth day of this moon, when I went to the garden to cut it down. To my surprise I was stopped by my elder brother's wife, Ts'ung Liu Shih, who refused to let me touch it. I am a man of peace and dared not take the law into my own hands, so I appeal to the court for help." The end of the case was that some of the neighbours--doubtless sympathising with the plaintiff in his laudable and natural longing for a good coffin--offered to "talk peace," and there was an amicable settlement out of court. The plaintiff got his tree but had to spend the amount that a good coffin would have cost in entertaining his genial neighbours at a feast. What became of the elder brother's wife did not transpire. From coffins to ancestral worship the transition is easy. Very numerous cases might be cited in which the magistrate is called upon to decide subtle questions--such as could seldom arise outside China--connected with adoption, inheritance, the guardianship of lands devoted to sacrificial purposes, and the custody of ancestral tablets. During a journey in western China I had some conversation with a missionary on this and allied topics. When I mentioned that the ancestral tablets were frequently produced in court as part of the evidence in a lawsuit and sometimes remained in the magistrate's custody for several days, the missionary remarked that he presumed I took advantage of such occasions to talk seriously to the "heathen" on the wickedness and folly of "idolatry." The fact that the people of Weihaiwei are still in the habit of appealing to the British courts for judgments in cases of this kind, is sufficient to show that the missionary's assumption was incorrect.