Chapter VI: Natural History of China (4)

A few notices of the advance made by the Chinese themselves in the study of natural history, taken from their great work on materia medica, the _Pun tsao_, or ‘Herbal,’ will form an appropriate conclusion to this chapter. This work is usually bound in forty octavo volumes, divided into fifty-two chapters, and contains many observations of value mixed up with a deal of incorrect and useless matter; and as those who read the book have not sufficient knowledge to discriminate between what is true and what is partly or wholly wrong, its reputation tends greatly to perpetuate the errors. The compiler of the _Pun tsao_, Lí Shí-chin, spent thirty years in collecting all the information on these subjects extant in his time, arranged it in a methodical manner for popular use, adding his own observations, and published it about 1590. He consulted some eight hundred preceding authors, from whom he selected one thousand five hundred and eighteen prescriptions, and added three hundred and seventy-four new ones, arranging his materials in fifty-two books in a methodical and (for his day) scientific manner. But how far behind the writings of Pliny and Dioscorides! The nucleus of Lí’s production is a small work which tradition ascribes to Shinnung, the God of Agriculture, and is doubtless anterior to the Han dynasty. His composition was well received, and attracted the notice of the Emperor, who ordered several succeeding editions to be published at the expense of the state. It was, in fact, so great an advance on all previous books, that it checked future writers in that branch, and Lí is likely now to be the first and last purely native critical writer on natural science in his mother tongue.

The first two volumes contain a collection of prefaces and indices, together with many notices of the theory of anatomy and medicine, and three books of pictorial illustrations of the rudest sort. Chapters I. and II. consist of introductory observations upon the practice of medicine, and an index of the recipes contained in the work, called the _Sure Guide to a Myriad of Recipes_; the whole filling the first seven volumes. Chapters III. and IV. contain lists of medicines for the cure of all diseases, occupying three volumes and a half, and comprising the therapeutical portion of the work, except a treatise on the pulse in the last volume.

In the subsequent chapters the author carefully goes over the entire range of nature, first giving the correct name and its explanation; then comes descriptive remarks, solutions of doubts and corrections of errors being interspersed, closing with notes on the savor, taste, and application of the recipes in which it is used. Chapters V. and VI. treat of inorganic substances under water and fire, and minerals under Chapters VII. to XI., as earth, metals, gems, and stones. Water is divided into aerial and terrestrial, _i.e._, from the clouds, and from springs, the ocean, etc. Fire is considered under eleven species, among which are the flames of coal, bamboo, moxa, etc. The chapter on earth comprises the secretions from various animals, as well as soot, ink, etc.; that on metals includes metallic substances and their common oxides; and gems are spoken of in the next division. The eleventh chapter, in true Chinese style, groups together what could not be placed in the preceding sections, including salts, minerals, etc. In looking at this arrangement one detects the similarity between it and the classification of characters in the language itself, showing the influence this has had upon it; thus _ho_, _shui_, _tu_, _kin_, _yuh_, _shih_, and _lu_, or fire, water, earth, metals, gems, stones, and salts, are the seven radicals under which the names of inorganic substances are classified in the imperial dictionary. A like similarity runs through other parts of the _Herbal_.

~BOTANY OF THE HERBAL.~

Chapters XII. to XXXVII., inclusive, treat of the vegetable kingdom, under five _pu_, or ‘divisions,’ viz.: herbs, grains, vegetables, fruits, and trees; which are again subdivided into _lui_, or ‘families,’ though the members of these families have no more relationship to each other than the heterogeneous family of an Egyptian slave dealer. The lowest term in the Chinese scientific scale is _chung_, which sometimes includes a genus, but quite as often corresponds to a species or even a variety, as Linneus understood those terms.

The first division of herbs contains nine families, viz.: hill plants, odoriferous, marshy, noxious, scandent or climbing, aquatic, stony, and mossy plants, and a ninth of one hundred and sixty-two miscellaneous plants not used in medicine, making six hundred and seventy-eight species in all. In this classification the habitat is the most influential principle of arrangement for the families, while the term _tsao_, or ‘herb,’ denotes whatever is not eaten or used in the arts, or which does not attain to the magnitude of a tree.

The second division of grains contains four families, viz.: 1, that of hemp, sesamum, buckwheat, wheat, rice, etc.; 2, the family of millet, maize, opium, etc.; 3, leguminous plants, pulse, peas, vetches, etc.; and 4, fermentable things, as bean curd, boiled rice, wine, yeast, congee, bread, etc., which, as they are used in medicine, and produced from vegetables, seem most naturally to come in this place. The first three families embrace thirty-nine species, and the last twenty-nine articles.

The third division of kitchen herbs contains five families: 1, offensive pungent plants, as leeks, mustard, ginger; 2, soft and mucilaginous plants, as dandelions, lilies, bamboo sprouts; 3, vegetables producing fruit on the ground, as tomatoes, egg-plants, melons; 4, aquatic vegetables; and 5, mushrooms and fungi. The number of species is one hundred and thirty-three, and some part of each of them is eaten.

The fourth division of fruits contains seven families: 1, the five fruits, the plum, peach, apricot, chestnut, and date (Rhamnus); 2, hill fruits, as the orange, pear, citron, persimmon; 3, foreign fruits, as the cocoanut, líchí, carambola; 4, aromatic fruits, as pepper, cubebs, tea; 5, trailing fruits, as melons, grape, sugar-cane; 6, aquatic fruits, as water caltrops, water lily, water chestnuts, etc.; and 7, fruits not used in medicine, as whampe. In all, one hundred and forty-seven species.

The fifth division of trees has six families: 1, odoriferous trees, as pine, cassia, aloes, camphor; 2, stately trees, as the willow, tamarix, elm, soapberry, palm, poplar, julibrissin or silk tree; 3, luxuriant growing trees, as mulberry, cotton, Cercis, Gardenia, Bombax, Hibiscus; 4, parasites or things attached to trees, as the mistletoe, pachyma, and amber; 5, flexible plants, as bamboo; this family has only four species; 6, includes what the other five exclude, though it might have been thought that the second and third families were sufficiently comprehensive to contain almost all miscellaneous plants. The number of species is one hundred and ninety-eight. All botanical subjects are classified in this manner under five divisions, thirty-one families, and one thousand one hundred and ninety-five species, excluding all fermentable things.

The arrangement of the botanical characters in the language does not correspond so well to this as does that of inorganic substances. The largest group in the language system is _tsao_, which comprises in general such herbaceous plants as are not used for food. The second, _muh_, includes all trees or shrubs; and the bamboo, on account of its great usefulness, stands by itself, though the characters mostly denote names of articles made of bamboo. No less than four radicals, viz., rice, wheat, millet, and grain, serve as the heads under which the esculent grasses are arranged; there are consequently many synonymes and superfluous distinctions. One family includes beans, and another legumes; one comprises cucurbitaceous plants, another the alliaceous, and a fourth the hempen; the importance of these plants as articles of food or manufacture no doubt suggested their adoption. Thus all vegetable substances are distributed in the language under eleven different heads.

~ITS ZOÖLOGY AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE HORSE.~

The zoölogical grouping in the _Pun tsao_ is as rude and unscientific as that of plants. There are five _pu_, or divisions, namely: insect, scaly, shelly, feathered, and hairy animals. The first division contains four families: 1 and 2, insects born from eggs, as bees and silkworms, butterflies and spiders; 3, insects produced by metamorphosis, as glow-worms, mole-crickets, bugs; and 4, water insects, as toads, centipedes, etc. The second division has four families: 1, the dragons, including the manis, “the only fish that has legs;” 2, snakes; 3, fishes having scales; and 4, scaleless fishes, as the eel, cuttle-fish, prawn. The third division is classified under the two heads of tortoises or turtles and mollusks, including the starfish, echinus, hermit-crab, etc. The fourth division contains birds arranged under four families: 1, water-fowl, as herons, king-fishers, etc.; 2, heath-fowl, sparrows, and pheasants; 3, forest birds, as magpies, crows; and 4, wild birds, as eagles and hawks. Beasts form the fifth division, which likewise contains four families: 1, the nine domesticated animals and their products; 2, wild animals, as lions, deers, otters; 3, rodentia, as the squirrel, hedgehog, rat; and 4, monkeys and fairies. The number of species in these five divisions is three hundred and ninety-one, but there are only three hundred and twenty different objects described, as the roe, fat, hair, exuviæ, etc., of animals are separately noticed.

The sixteen zoölogical characters in the language are not quite so far astray from being types of classes as the eleven botanical ones. Nine of them are mammiferous, viz.: the tiger, dog, and leopard, which stand for the carnivora; the rat for rodentia; the ox, sheep, and deer for ruminants; and the horse and hog for pachydermatous. Birds are chiefly comprised under one radical _niao_, but there is a sub-family of short-tailed gallinaceous fowls, though much confusion exists in the division. Fishes form one group, and improperly include crabs, lizards, whales, and snakes, though most of the latter are placed along with insects, or else under the dragons. The tortoise, toad, and dragon are the types of three small collections, and insects are comprised in the sixteenth and last. These groups, although they contain many anomalies, as might be expected, are still sufficiently natural to teach those who write the language something of the world around them. Thus, when one sees that a new character contains the radical _dog_ in composition, he will be sure that it is neither fowl, fish, nor bug, nor any animal of the pachydermatous, cervine, or ruminant tribes, although he may have never seen the animal nor heard its name. This peculiarity runs through the whole language, indeed, but in other groups, as for instance those under the radicals man, woman, and child, or heart, hand, leg, etc., the characters include mental and passionate emotions, as well as actions and names, so that the type is not sufficiently indicative to convey a definite idea of the words included under it; the names of natural objects being most easily arranged in this manner.

Between the account of plants and animals the _Herbal_ has one chapter on garments and domestic utensils, for such things “are used in medicine and are made out of plants.” The remaining chapters, XXXIX.-LII., treat of animals, as noticed above. The properties of the objects spoken of are discussed in a very methodical manner, so that a student can immediately turn to a plant or mineral and ascertain its virtue. For instance, the information relative to the history and uses of the horse is contained in twenty-four sections. The first explains the character, _ma_, which was originally intended to represent the outline of the animal. The second describes the varieties of horses, the best kinds for medical use, and gives brief descriptions of them, for the guidance of the practitioner. “The pure white are the best for medicine. Those found in the south and east are small and weak. The age is known by the teeth. The eye reflects the full image of a man. If he eats rice his feet will become heavy; if rat’s dung, his belly will grow long; if his teeth be rubbed with dead silkworms, or black plums, he will not eat, nor if the skin of a rat or wolf be hung in his manger. He should not be allowed to eat from a hog’s trough, lest he contract disease; and if a monkey is kept in the stable he will not fall sick.”

The third section goes on to speak of the flesh, which is an article of food; that of a pure white stallion is the most wholesome. One author recommends “eating almonds, and taking a rush broth, if the person feel uncomfortable after a meal of horse-flesh. It should be roasted and eaten with ginger and pork; and to eat the flesh of a black horse, and not drink wine with it, will surely produce death.” The fourth describes the crown of the horse, the “fat of which is sweet, and good to make the hair grow and the face to shine.” The fifth and succeeding sections to the twenty-fourth treat of the sanative properties and mode of exhibiting the milk, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, placenta, teeth, bones, skin, mane, tail, brains, blood, perspiration, and excrements.

Some of the directions are dietetic, and others are prescriptive. “When eating horse-flesh do not eat the liver,” is one of the former, given because of the absence of a gall-bladder in the liver, which imports its poisonous qualities. “The heart of a white horse, or that of a hog, cow, or hen, when dried and rasped into spirit and so taken, cures forgetfulness; if the patient hears one thing he knows ten.” “Above the knees the horse has _night-eyes_ (warts), which enable him to go in the night; they are useful in the toothache;” these sections partake both of the descriptive and prescriptive. Another medical one is: “If a man be restless and hysterical when he wishes to sleep, and it is requisite to put him to rest, let the ashes of a skull be mingled with water and given him, and let him have a skull for a pillow, and it will cure him.” The same preservative virtues appear to be ascribed to a horse’s hoof hung in a house as are supposed, by some who should know better, to belong to a horseshoe when nailed upon the door.[215] The whole of this extensive work is liberally sprinkled with such whimsies, but the practice of medicine among the Chinese is vastly better than their theories; for as Rémusat justly observes, “To see well and reason falsely are not wholly incompatible, and the naturalists of China, as well as the chemists and physicians of our ancient schools, have sometimes tried to reconcile them.”

~NATURAL SCIENCES IN CHINA.~

Another work on botany besides the _Herbal_, issued in 1848, deserves notice for its research and the excellence of its drawings. It is the _Chih Wuh Ming-shih Tu-kao_, or _Researches into the Names and Virtues of Plants_, with plates, in sixty volumes. There are one thousand seven hundred and fifteen drawings of plants, with descriptions of each, arranged in eleven books, followed by medical and agricultural observations on the most important in four books. One of its valuable points to the foreigner is the terminology furnished by the two authors for describing the parts and uses of plants. Rémusat read a paper in 1828, ‘On the State of the Natural Sciences among the Orientals,’ in which he indicates the position attained by Chinese in their researches into the nature and uses of objects around them. After speaking of the adaptation the language possesses, from its construction, to impart some general notions of animated and vegetable nature, he goes on to remark upon the theorizing propensities of their writers, instead of contenting themselves with examining and recording facts. “In place of studying the organization of bodies, they undertake to determine by reasoning how it should be, an aim which has not seldom led them far from the end they proposed. One of the strangest errors among them relates to the transformation of beings into each other, which has arisen from popular stories or badly conducted observations on the metamorphoses of insects. Learned absurdities have been added to puerile prejudices; that which the vulgar have believed the philosophers have attempted to explain, and nothing can be easier, according to the oriental systems of cosmogony, in which a simple matter, infinitely diversified, shows itself in all beings. Changes affect only the apparent properties of bodies, or rather the bodies themselves have only appearances; according to these principles, they are not astonished at seeing the electric fluid or even the stars converted into stones, as happens when aerolites fall. That animated beings become inanimate is proven by fossils and petrifactions. Ice enclosed in the earth for a millennium becomes rock crystal; and it is only necessary that lead, the _father_ of all metals (as Saturn, its alchemistic type, was of gods), pass through four periods of two centuries each to become successively cinnabar, tin, and silver. In spring the rat changes into a quail, and quails into rats again during the eighth month.

“The style in which these marvels is related is now and then a little equivocal; but if they believe part of them proved, they can see nothing really impossible in the others. One naturalist, less credulous than his fellows, rather smiles at another author who reported the metamorphosis of an oriole into a mole, and of rice into a carp; ‘it is a ridiculous story,’ says he; ‘there is proof only of the change of rats into quails, which is reported in the almanac, and which I have often seen myself, for there is an unvaried progression, as well of transformations as of generations.’ Animals, according to the Chinese, are viviparous as quadrupeds, or oviparous as birds; they grow by transformations, as insects, or by the effect of humidity, as snails, slugs, and centipedes.... The success of such systems is almost always sure, not in China alone either, because it is easier to put words in place of things, to stop at nothing, and to have formulas ready for solving all questions. It is thus that they have formed a scientific jargon, which one might almost think had been borrowed from our dark ages, and which has powerfully contributed to retain knowledge in China in the swaddling-clothes we now find it. Experience teaches that when the human mind is once drawn into a false way, the lapse of ages and the help of a man of genius are necessary to draw it out. Ages have not been wanting in China, but the man whose superior enlightenment might dissipate these deceitful glimmerings, would find it very difficult to exercise this happy influence as long as their political institutions attract all their inquiring minds or vigorous intellects far away from scientific researches into the literary examinations, or put before them the honors and employments which the functions and details of magisterial appointments bring with them.”[216]

~CONSERVATISM OF NATIVE RESEARCH.~

This last observation indicates the reason, to a great degree, for the fixedness of the Chinese in all departments of learned inquiry; hard labor employs the energy and time of the ignorant mass, and emulation in the strife to reach official dignities consumes and perverts the talents of the learned. Then their language itself disheartens the most enthusiastic students in this branch of study, on account of its vagueness and want of established terms. When the vivifying and strengthening truths of revelation shall be taught to the Chinese, and its principles acted upon among them, we may expect more vigor in their minds and more profit in their investigations into the wonders of nature.

FOOTNOTES:

[167] _The Chinese_, Vol. II., pp. 333-343.

[168] _Journal of the Geolog. Soc._, London, for 1871, p. 379.

[169] _Im fernen Osten_, p. 462.

[170] _China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen._ Band I., S. 74. Berlin, 1877.

[171] Compare Kingsmill, in the _Quar. Journal of the Geol. Soc. of London_, 1868, pp. 119 ff., and in the _North China Herald_, Vol. IX., 85, 86.

[172] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 395.

[173] _Across America and Asia_, pp. 291 ff.

[174] _Five Months on the Yang-tsze_, p. 265. _Annales de la Foi_, Tome IX., p. 457.

[175] _N. C. Br. R. A. Soc. Journal_, New Series, No. III., pp. 94-106, and No. IV., pp. 243 ff. Notes by Mr. Hollingworth of a Visit to the Coal Mines in the Neighborhood of Loh-Ping. _Blue Book, China_, No. 2, 1870, p. 11. _Notes and Queries on China and Japan_, Vol. II., pp. 74-76. _North China Herald_, passim. Richthofen’s _Letters_, and in _Ocean Highways_, Nov., 1873. _Chinese Repository_, Vol. XIX., pp. 385 ff.

[176] Compare Rémusat, _Histoire de Khotan_, pp. 163 ff., where there is an extended list of Chinese precious stones drawn from native sources.

[177] Murray’s _China_, Edinburgh, 1843, Vol. III., p. 276; compare also an article on this stone by M. Blondel, of Paris, published in the _Smithsonian Report_ for 1876. _Mémoires concernant les Chinois_, Tome XIII., p. 389. Rémusat in the _Journal des Savans_, Dec., 1818, pp. 748 ff. _Notes and Queries on C. and J._, Vol. II., pp. 173, 174, and 187; Vol. III., p. 63; Vol. IV., pp. 13 and 33. _Macmillan’s Magazine_, October, 1871. Yule, _Cathay and the Way Thither_, Vol. II., p. 564.

[178] _Nephrit und Jadeit, nach ihren mineralogischen Eigenschaften sowie nach ihrer urgeschichtlichen und ethnographischen Bedeutung._ Heinrich Fischer, Stuttgart, 1880. An exhaustive treatise on every phrase and variety of the mineral.

[179] Obtained from Badakshan. Wood, _Journey to the Oxus_, p. 263.

[180] _Geological Researches in China_, Chap. X.

[181] Humboldt, _Fragmens Asiatiques_, Tome I., p. 196. _Annales de la Foi_, Janvr., 1829, pp. 416 ff.

[182] Breton, _China, its Costumes, Arts_, etc., Vol. II.

[183] Bridgman’s _Chinese Chrestomathy_, p. 469.

[184] _Chinese Repository_, Vol. VII., p. 90.

[185] _Zoöl. Soc. Proc._, 1870, p. 626.

[186] Borget, _La Chine Ouverte_, p. 147.

[187] _Chinese Repository_, Vol. XII., p. 608.

[188] Ibid., Vol. VI., p. 411.

[189] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 353.

[190] _Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans._

[191] _Oriental and Western Siberia_, p. 416.

[192] _Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, May, 1859, p. 289.

[193] _Journal N. C. Br. R. A. Soc._, Vol. IV., 1867, Art. XI., by T. Watters.

[194] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 237.

[195] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 246--where there is an admirable wood-cut of one from Wood.

[196] _From Kulja to Lob-nor_, p. 116.

[197] John Gould, _Century of Birds_. London, 1831-32.

[198] On the birds of China, see in general _Les Oiseaux de la Chine_, par M. l’Abbé Armand David, avec un Atlas de 124 Planches dessinées et lith. par M. Arnoul. Paris, 1877. R. Swinhoe, in the _Proceedings of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoölogical Soc. of London_, and in _The Ibis, a Magazine of General Ornithology_, passim. _Journ. N. C. Br. R. A. Soc._, Nos. II., p. 225, and III., p. 287.

[199] _Chinese Repository_, Vol. VII., p. 213. Compare Yule’s note, _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 232. Huc, _Travels in Tartary_, etc., Vol. II., p. 246. Bell, _Journey from St. Petersburgh in Russia to Ispahan in Persia_, Vol. I., p. 216. Also Heeren, _Asiatic Nations_, Vol. I., p. 98, where there is a _résumé_ of Ctesias’ account of the unicorn.

[200] _Chinese Repository_, Vol. VII., p. 250. For a careful analysis of this relic of ancient lore, see the _Nouveau Journal Asiatique_, Tome XII., pp. 232-243, 1833; also Tome VIII., 3d Series, pp. 337-382, 1839, for M. Bazin’s estimate of its value.

[201] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. II., p. 46.

[202] Vol. III., p. 445.

[203] Conspectus of collections made by Dr. Cantor, _Chinese Repository_, Vol. X., p. 434. General features of Chusan, with remarks on the Flora and Fauna of that Island, by T. E. Cantor, _Annal. Nat. Hist._, Vol. IX. (1842), pp. 265, 361, and 481. _Journal As. Soc. of Bengal_, Vol. XXIV., 1855.

[204] Hanbury’s notes on _Chinese Materia Medica_, 1862; _Pharmaceutical Journal_, Feb., 1862.

[205] Baron Richthofen’s _Letters_, No. VII., to Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, May, 1872, p. 52.

[206] Darwin, _Naturalist’s Voyage_, p. 35, notices a similar habit of the sphex in the vicinity of Rio Janeiro. The insect partially kills the spider or caterpillar by stinging, when they are stored in a rotting state with her eggs.

[207] Compare Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 271; A. R. Wallace, _The Malay Archipelago_, pp. 87-91, American Ed.

[208] See also in _Notes and Queries on C. and J._, Vol. III., pp. 115, 129, 139, 147, 150, 170.

[209] From calculations of Humboldt it was estimated that the productiveness of this plant as compared with wheat is as 133 to 1, and as against potatoes, 44 to 1.

[210] Compare Yule’s _Marco Polo_, Vol. I., p. 197.

[211] The application of this name to the jujube plum by foreigners, because the kind cured in honey resembled Arabian dates in color, size, and taste when brought on the table, is a good instance of the manner in which errors arise and are perpetuated from mere carelessness.

[212] Compare Dr. H. F. Hance, in _Journal of Botany_, Vol. IX., p. 38.

[213] _Travels in Siberia_, Vol. II., p. 151.

[214] _Wanderings in China._

[215] _Chinese Repository_, Vol. VII., p. 393.

[216] _Mélanges Orientales, Posthumes_, p. 215.