The Chinese have erected temples in Hainan to the Tyfoon Mother, a goddess whom they supplicate for protection against these hurricanes. They say “that a few days before a tyfoon comes on, a slight noise is heard at intervals, whirling round and then stopping, sometimes impetuous and sometimes slow. This is a ‘tyfoon brewing.’ Then fiery clouds collect in thick masses; the thunder sounds deep and heavy. Rainbows appear, now forming an unbroken curve and again separating, and the ends of the bow dip into the sea. The sea sends back a bellowing sound, and boils with angry surges; the loose rocks dash against each other, and detached sea-weed covers the water; there is a thick, murky atmosphere; the water-fowl fly about affrighted; the trees and leaves bend to the south--the tyfoon has commenced. When to it is superadded a violent rain and a frightful surf, the force of the tempest is let loose, and away fly the houses up to the hills, and the ships and boats are removed to the dry land; horses and cattle are turned heels over head, trees are torn up by the roots, and the sea boils up twenty or thirty feet, inundating the fields and destroying vegetation. This is called _tieh kü_, or an _iron whirlwind_.”[27] Those remarkable gusts which annually occur in the Atlantic States, called _tornadoes_, defined as local storms affecting a thread of surface a few miles long, are unknown in China. The healthy climate of China has had much to do with the civilization of its inhabitants. No similar area in the world exceeds it for general salubrity. ~FU, TING, CHAU, AND HIEN.~ The Chinese are the only people who have, by means of a term added to the name of a place, endeavored to designate its relative rank. Three of the words used for this purpose, viz., _fu_, _chau_, and _hien_, have been translated as ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and ‘third’ rank; but this gradation is not quite correct, for the terms do not apply to the city or town alone, but to the portions of country of which it is the capital. The nature of these and other terms, and the divisions intended by them, are thus explained: