According to Chinese ideas the "Three Harmonies" are "Heaven, Earth, and Man." All three of them are at present out of sorts with each other. What is imperatively needed is a reconciliation, but this can never be had until the Chinese come to a more accurate appreciation of the limits of the powers of each of the triad. A new set of men would soon make a new earth, and then the heavens would be found to be well enough as they are. In the course of ten years enough water falls for the use of all, and not too much to be managed. But man must learn how to control it, and until he does so, "Heaven, earth and man" will never be in right relations. XVII THE VILLAGE HUNT There are parts of the wide province of Shan-tung, in which there are great sheets of clear and deep water much frequented by water-fowl, especially in the autumn and in the winter. In any Western land these districts would be the paradise of hunters, but here the ducks and the geese go their several ways in "peace and tranquillity along the whole road," undisturbed by the gun of the sportsman or the pot-hunter. This is due to an old-time custom of the yamên in the Prefectural city contiguous to the largest marshes, of levying a squeeze on the results of the gunner's toil, a squeeze so comprehensive and virtually prohibitory in its action that water-fowl are practically out of the market altogether. There is a record in the life of Dr. Medhurst, one of the pioneer missionaries in China, and father of Sir Walter Medhurst, sometime Her Majesty's Consul-General in Shanghai, of a trip which he and a companion made north from Shanghai along the coasts of Shan-tung. Their plan was to debark from the fishing junk in which they had taken passage, cut across from one headland to another and then rejoin their vessel to repeat the same process farther on. In this way they succeeded in penetrating to a few fishing villages and had conversation with a handful of people all along shore. With charming frankness the historian of this pioneer tour mentions that they nowhere saw any wild animals. We can readily believe him, for even at this advanced stage of extended exploration, the only wild animal that the most experienced traveller is likely to see is the hare, albeit there are sundry others such as weasels, a kind of ground-fox, and the like, which do not obtrude themselves to any extent in public.