That night she dreamt the black Ti appeared, and said to her, 'You shall have a son, a sage, and you must bring him forth in a hollow mulberry tree.' One day during her pregnancy, she fell into a dreamy state, and saw five old men in the hall, who called themselves the essences of the five planets, and led an animal which looked like a small cow with one horn, and was covered with scales like a dragon. This creature knelt before Chang-tsai, and cast forth from its mouth a slip of jade, on which was the inscription,-- 'The son of the essence of water shall succeed to the decaying Chau, and be a throneless king.' Chang-tsai tied a piece of embroidered ribbon about its horn, and the vision disappeared. When Heh was told of it, he said, 'The creature must be the Ch'i-lin.' As her time drew near, Chang-tsai asked her husband if there was any place in the neighborhood called 'the hollow mulberry tree.' He told her there was a dry cave in the south hill, which went by that name. Then she said, 'I will go and be confined there.' Her husband was surprised, but when made acquainted with her former dream, he made the necessary arrangements. On the night when the child was born, two dragons came and kept watch on the left and right of the hill, and two spirit-ladies appeared in the air, pouring out fragrant odors, as if to bathe Chang-tsai; and as soon as the birth took place, a spring of clear warm water bubbled up from the floor of the cave, which dried up again when the child had been washed in it. The child was of an extraordinary appearance; with a mouth like the sea, ox lips, a dragon's back, &c. &c. On the top of his head was a remarkable formation, in consequence of which he was named Ch'iu, &c. See the 列國志, Bk. lxxviii.--Sze-ma Ch'ien seems to make Confucius to have been illegitimate, saying that Heh and Miss Yen cohabited in the wilderness (野合 ). Chiang Yung says that the phrase has reference simply to the disparity of their ages. 2 Sze-ma Ch'ien says that Confucius was born in the twenty-second year of duke Hsiang, B.C. 550. He is followed by Chu Hsi in the short sketch of Confucius's life prefixed to the Lun Yu, and by 'The Annals of the Empire' (歷代統紀表), published with imperial sanction in the reign of Chia-ch'ing. (To this latter work I have generally referred for my dates.) The year assigned in the text above rests on the authority of Ku-liang and Kung- yang, the two commentators on the Ch'un-Ch'iu. With regard to the month, however, the tenth is that assigned by Ku-liang, while Kung-yang names the eleventh. 3 Tsau is written 郰, 鄹, 陬, and 鄒. sacrificial vessels, and at postures of ceremony. Of his schooling we have no reliable account. There is a legend, indeed, that at seven he went to school to Yen P'ing-chung [1], but it must be rejected as P'ing-chung belonged to the State of Ch'i. He tells us himself that at fifteen he bent his mind to learning [2]; but the condition of the family was one of poverty.