Plate XLVII. — A Mandarin’s Officer
This gentleman is a sort of appendage to a man in power. Some half-dozen of them generally precede a mandarin of rank when he goes in procession, but more especially when he attends a tribunal of justice. Their peculiar province seems to be that of keeping off the crowd. The feathers they wear in their tall conical hats are from three to six feet in length, and are apparently the tail feathers of a peculiar species of pheasant, which is represented as very scarce. Some of them wear the tail feathers of the argus pheasant.