But twice is there mention of human sacrifice in the _Chu’un Ts’ew_ but both references indicate that there was little regard for honour as well as for human life. In the account of the reign of Duke He, who ruled from 658 to 626 B. C., it is said that when the Viscount Tsang went to covenant with the people of Choo, the Viscount was sacrificed as an animal might be sacrificed on an altar built on the banks of the Suy in order that the wild tribes of the East might be frightened and “drawn toward him.”[87] In the twelfth year of the reign of Duke Ch’aou, who was Marquis of Loo from B. C. 540 to 509, the army of Ts’oo seized Yew (Yin) and sacrificed him on Mount Kang.[88] Not until the reign of Choen Tche (1633 to 1662 A.D.) was there any movement to check the slaughter of infants. Then it was found that infanticide had desolated so many of the provinces that it was necessary for this Emperor, the founder of the Tsing dynasty, to condemn the crime and warn the inhabitants of Hang Hoi, of Kiang Sou, and of Fou-kien that the practice must stop. The first official document endeavouring to save the children was dated the second day of the third moon, 1659, and was an appeal to the Emperor by an under-official. “The Supreme King,” it begins, “loves to give life and to prevent destruction. All men have received from Heaven a pitying heart. But the corruption of morals comes between the father and the child and causes men to be guilty of cruelty. I, your humble subject, have learned that in the provinces of Kiang Nan, Kiang Si, and Fou Kien there exists the barbarous custom of drowning little girls.” The request of the official for an imperial edict against the practice was approved by Choen Tche, who condemned the murder of female children and ordered the mandarins of the provinces named to use means to check the practice. On the twenty-third day of the third moon in the same year in the presence of his advisers, he issued the following edict: “We had heard that there were people who drowned their girl children but we had not been able to believe it. Today our censor T’Kiai having addressed to us a petition on this unholy practice, we are led to believe that it must really exist. “The paternal emotions come from nature and there ought not be any difference in the manner of treating sons and daughters. Why should parents conduct themselves cruelly toward girl babies and condemn them to death? Meng Tse has said: “‘When one sees an infant on the point of falling into a well every man feels in his heart the sentiments of fear and compassion.’ “Here, however, it is not a question of strangers or of passers-by. Since all men are moved at the sight of an infant in danger when that infant is a stranger, what kind of parents must those be who deprive their own children of life? What excesses are they not capable of when they can commit such crimes? [Illustration: SPECIAL REPOSITORY FOR BODIES OF NEGLECTED BABIES, CHINA