In the tail-cutting delusion, which died out in 1879, after spreading over the country like an epidemic, we see an example of Tauist ideas. The fairy that cuts off hair is checked and prevented by a charm. A written charm curled up in the plaited queue at the back of the head is a protective shield against all the assaults of witchcraft. Tauism attempts to soothe the fears of the people by this artifice. In Peking lately I myself heard that a writer of charms hired men to go along the streets shouting to people that for safety they should place charms in their hair, and detailing cases of the loss of queues in the night, or while men were sleeping in the day-time. These hired men brought to the writers of charms a great increase of custom. Every one wished to buy one. There must be something in it, for every one talked of it. We must, they said to themselves, buy a charm. The charm used in Peking against the danger of waking without a queue, consists of four mysterious characters, which are all found in Kang-hi's dictionary. They were, we are there told, used against a similar delusion in the Ming dynasty.

The Tauism of to-day meets us with this special characteristic. Yet it is but one part of the popular Tauism, which in great part consists of a monastic institute for reading liturgical books after the Buddhist fashion.

Dr. Yates says, in his lecture on Ancestral Worship and