world. This feeling has such a hold on them that when four victims were decapitated in Peking, their relatives instantly claimed the bodies and sewed on the heads. The permission to do this was regarded by them as a great privilege and a mitigation of the sentence. The prisons of China are made up of a certain number of wards according to their class. Thus, for example, the prisons of the respective counties of Nam-hoi and Pun-yu in the province of Kwang-tung, which are first-class county prisons, consist (besides chambers in which prisoners on remand are confined) of six large wards in each of which are four large cells, making in all twenty-four cells. The same arrangements may be said to prevail in all county prisons. The walls of the various wards abut one upon another and form a parallelogram. Round the outer wall a paved pathway runs upon which the gates of the various wards open. This pathway is flanked by a large wall which constitutes the boundary wall of the prison. The cells are of considerable size. The four cells in each ward are arranged two on a side so as to form the two sides of a square, and they much resemble cattle sheds, the front of each being enclosed in a strong palisading of wood which extends from the ground to the roof. They are paved with granite, and each is furnished with a raised wooden platform on which the prisoners sit by day and sleep by night. They are polluted with vermin and filth of almost every kind, and the prisoners seldom or never have an opportunity afforded them of washing their bodies or even dressing their hair, as water in Chinese prisons is a scarce commodity and hair-combs are almost unknown. The approach to the prison is a narrow passage at the entrance of which there is an ordinary sized door. Above this entrance door is painted a tiger’s head with large staring eyes and widely extended jaws. Upon entering, the visitor finds an altar on which stands the figure of a tiger hewn in granite. This image is regarded as the tutelary deity of the prison gates. The turnkeys worship it morning and evening, with the view of propitiating it and securing its watchfulness, gaolers in China being held responsible for the safe custody of the miserable beings who are entrusted to their care. At the base of the large wall which forms the prison boundary there are several hovels--for by no other name can they be designated--in some of which all the female felons are lodged and in others whole families who are held as witnesses by the mandarins.