is Shâo Hâo, and the (attending) spirit is Zû-shâu. Its insects are the hairy. Its musical note is Shang, and its pitch-tube is Nan Lü[1].
3. Its number is nine. Its taste is bitter. Its smell is rank. Its sacrifice is that of the gate; and of the parts of the victim the liver has the foremost place.
4. Sudden and violent winds come. The wild geese arrive[2]. The swallows return (whence they came)[2]. Tribes of birds store up provisions (for the future)[3].
5. The son of Heaven occupies the 𝖅ung-kang Grand Fane; rides in the war chariot, drawn by the white horses with black manes, and bearing the white flag. He is clothed in the white robes, and wears the white gems. He eats hemp-seed and dog's flesh. The vessels which he uses are rectangular or cornered, and rather deep.
6. In this month they take especial care of the
- ↑ Nan Lü, "the southern spine," is the tube that gives the fifth of the lower musical accords.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 The wild geese are now returning to their winter quarters, from which they had come in the first month of spring; see page 251. So with the swallows, who had appeared in the second month of spring; see page 259.
- ↑ This sentence is hardly translatable or intelligible. Some would read as in paragraph 95 of "the Brief Calendar of Hsiâ" (丹鳥羞白鳥), translated by Professor Douglas: "The red birds (i.e. fire-flies) devour the white birds (i.e. mosquitoes)," which he ingeniously supports by a reference to the habits of the fire-fly from Chambers' Encyclopædia. But his translation of hsiû by "devour" is inadmissible. Wang Thâo says that this view is "chisseling." "Sparrows and other birds," he says, "now collect seeds of grapes and trees, and store them in their nests and holes against the time of rain and snow."
