12 Mr. Davis's Memoir concerning the Chinese. 



iiomers : but the recording an eclipse may prove the authenticity of histo- 

 rical annals, while, at the same time, it proves nothing as to the existence of 

 astronomical science. Some persons have been led to suspect that the 

 Chinese must at one time have possessed the astronomy of the Hindus, by 

 their having twenty-eight h nar mansions, and a cycle of sixty years : but a 

 careful observation of the essential differences that exist on either side, must 

 remove all shadow of identity. The Hindu cycle is a cycle of Jupiter, 

 while that of the Chinese is a solar cycle ; and the twenty-eight constella- 

 tions of the Hindus are nearly all of them equal divisions of the circle, 

 consisting of about 13° each, while the Chinese constellations are extremely 

 unequal, varying from 30" to less than 1°. 



That the Chinese possessed no real science of their own, and that tliey 

 obtained none from the Hindus, is, I think, proved by the readiness with 

 which they adopted that of Europeans. On this one subject that singular 

 nation has deviated from its established prejudices and maxims against 

 introducing what is foreign : and that a people so self-sufficient and vain, 

 should at once, in open violation of their general practice, have adopted the 

 science of foreigners, and raised its professors to high dignities, is perhaps 

 the strongest proof in the world tiiat they possessed none of their own. It 

 appears that they have in former times adopted the very errors of our astro- 

 nomy, most probably from the Arabians. 1 discovered in an old Chinese 

 book the most exact delineation of the Ptolemaic system, with its crystalline 

 orbs, primum mobile, &c. &c. and the Earth occupying a conspicuous place in 

 the centre of all. Indeed it is impossible not to smile at tiie idea of attributing 

 ar^y science to a people, whose learned books arc filled with such trumpery 

 as the diagrams of Fa-hi, and a hundred other puerilities of the same kind. 



In a consideration of this vast and extraordinary Empire, there is no 

 point of inquiry more curious, or more interesting, than the amount of its 

 population ; and though it deserves to be ascertained with some degree 

 of accuracy, it has perhaps been the subject of as many vague guesses 

 and conjectures as any other. The enormous amount of 333 millions, 

 stated to Lord Macartney, was supported by ro better authority than 

 the mere assertions of Mandarins, at all times ready enough to make the most 

 of their country in the eyes of foreigners, and generally possessed of very 

 little correct information on such points, even if they were willing to give it. 

 The document to which Dr. Morrison refers for the sum of 1 43 millions, 

 would be deserving of great attention, did it not destroy its own credit by 



