SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 525 



The zoological grouping is as crude and unscientific as that of 

 plants, though the sixteen zoological characters in the language are 

 not so far astray from being true types of classes as the eleven botanical 

 ones, and these groups, though containing many anomalies, are still 

 sufficiently natural to teach those who write the language something 

 of the world around them. 



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 virtues. 



3. Geography. — A few sentences from Williams's " Middle King- 

 dom " will show the state of geographical knowledge among the Chinese 

 prior to western influence. 



Their geographical knowledge is ridiculous. Maps of their own territories 

 are tolerably good, being originally drawn from actual surveys made by nine of 

 the Jesuits, between 1708 and 1718, and since that time have been filled up and 

 changed to conform to alterations and divisions. Before the day of western 

 influence, and even long after, to a great extent until the present decade, in fact, 

 the Chinese did not teach geography in their schools, even of their own empire. 

 The common people have no knowledge, therefore, of the form and divisions of 

 the globe, and the si2e and position of the kingdoms of the earth. Their common 

 maps delineate them very erroneously, scattering islands, kingdoms and conti- 

 nents, as they have heard of their existence at haphazard and in various corners 

 beyond the frontiers. . . . Their notions of the earth 's inhabitants are equally 

 whimsical. . . . Charts for the guidance of the navigator, or instruments to aid 

 him in determining his position at sea, the Chinese are nearly or quite destitute 

 of; they have retrograded rather than progressed in navigation, if one judges 

 from the accounts of their former trade with ports in the Persian Gulf, on the 

 Malabar coast, and in the Archipelago. 



Of course in the modern schools now under way throughout the 

 empire correct geographical notions are being taught; but such schools 

 have been so few up till 1900 and the total number of modern students 

 so small even since then, that the notions of the common people are 

 still subject to Williams's characterization. To what extent even the 

 supposedly more intelligent are still " at sea " in such matters is well 

 shown by two recent cases, which illustrate also some effects of present- 

 day scientific ideas upon Chinese minds educated according to the 

 methods which have prevailed in China for ages. 



At the Shansi University, in discussing the search for the North 

 Pole, a holder of the Chinese first degree seriously suggested that when 

 the ship had proceeded as far north as possible, the pole might be seen 

 with the aid of a telescope. Another man thought of the same expe- 

 dient, but considered that the curvature of the earth would render it 

 impossible, and suggested that ascending in a balloon might afford the 

 opportunity to use the telescope to see the pole. Still another man 

 thought it would be simpler first to moderate the climate of the polar 

 regions by planting trees along the way there, and by diverting the gulf 



