force in China it cannot afford to weaken its hold in the very citadel of China's power. It should be borne in mind that the work of the missionaries stationed at Peking is not confined to the city, but that Peking is a base from which they work out on the east and south till they reach the boundaries of the Tien-tsin and Paoting-fu station fields, while on the north and west a vast and populous region for an indefinite distance is wholly dependent upon them for Christian teaching. Extensive and densely inhabited areas of the province are not being worked by any board. The Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who has lived there for a generation, says that there are a hundred times as many people in the Peking region as are now being reached, and that there are 20,000,000 in the province who have never yet heard of Christ. For this enormous field the missionary agencies now at work are really few. Hundreds of American cities of half a million inhabitants have a greater number of ordained workers than this entire province of Chih-li with a population nearly half as large as that of the United States. Indeed there is room for a great extension of the work without overcrowding. Each denomination occupies a large and distinct geographical field in this province. For example, all that portion of the city and suburbs of Peking north of the line of the Forbidden City, with a population of about 200,000, is considered Presbyterian territory. No other missionaries are located in that part of Peking. In the country, the counties of San-ho, Huai-jou, Pao-ti, to the north and east of Peking, are also understood to be distinctively Presbyterian ground. San-ho County alone is said to have 1,200 towns and villages, while the other counties are also very populous. No other Protestant denomination is working in any of these counties. At Paoting-fu, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians have made a division of the field, the former taking everything south of a line drawn through the centre of the city and the latter everything north of that line. Each denomination thus has wholly to itself half the city of Paoting-fu and about a dozen outlying counties.