478 PROCEEDINGS. 
The improvement observable in the critical powers and intellectual 
attainments of the Chinese was due to the invention of printing. 
That led to the multiplication of books. They were found in every 
village and city, and of course the knowledge of the student as it 
increased improved his reasoning faculties. It had not been without 
result that the Chinese had through four dynasties printed books 
largely. This mode of looking at the subject was needed in judging 
of the antiquity of parts of their literature. They could test the 
results of Chinese criticism by appealing to their own science. The — 
most ancient fragments of Chinese literature were not of a mythical 
kind. They do not contain such myths as are found in Livy, nor could 
they be rejected as the early parts of Livy were rejected. But they 
do contain some astronomy. The places of the stars as there given 
agree with the positions of those stars as now known by the law 
of the precession of the equinoxes. Those positions could not have 
been known to the Chinese except by actually observing them. 
Thus the stars in the sky are witnesses to the correctness of these 
ancient records. Since the astronomy in old Chinese literature was a 
correct, this must be viewed as evidence favourable so far to the 
claims to acceptance of the narratives in which it was imbedded. 
The meeting then terminated with a vote of thanks to the 
Chairman, . 
Minutes of Proceepinas at a Ganerat Meerine held at the Society's — : : 
Library, Museum Road, Shanghai, on Monday, 6th April 1891, a 
at 9 p.m. oo: 
Dr. Joszrx Epxins, Vice-President, occupied the chair, and 
there were about twenty members present. se 
The Cuairman having asked that the minutes of the last meeting : 
be taken as read, as they had been so fully published in the papers : 
the Honorary Secretary, Mr. Mencarini, announced the election 
the following new members :—Messrs. Henrick Bohr, Ting Lhsien 
Harold Browett, J. F. Billinghurst, E. Gerecke, Liugi Camera, 
J. P. Donovan, W. M. Andrew and J. Timm, of Shanghai 
