OF THE TRANSLATOR. 19 



nephew of the author, and ordered it to be printed at the expense of 

 the State. 



The third work is entitled King-ting-cheou-chi-thong-khao, or a 

 General Examination of Agriculture, composed by order of the 

 Emperor. It is twice as extensive as the preceding collection, and 

 is composed of LXXVIII books, distributed in 24 volumes, small, in 

 folio, printed with all the care and elegance that distinguishes the 

 imperial editions. This compilation, undertaken a hundred years af- 

 ter, (in 1739,) in virtue of a special decree, by learned men of the 

 first order, aided by the most skilful agriculturists of the empire, gives 

 him a high importance. The extent of this work, its official char- 

 acter, and recent date, if compared with the two collections above- 

 mentioned, have made me resolve to extract from it the Treatise on 

 the Cultivation of Mulberry Trees and the raising of Silk Worms, the 

 translation of which the Minister of Commerce has intrusted to me. 



If I was not afraid of being misled from my subject, I would make 

 all the objects known which this agricultural encyclopaedia embraces. 

 I will content myself to say that a complete treatise can be found 

 there, (books XXI-XL.) of leguminous plants, of grain, and particu- 

 larly of the cultivation of rice, accompanied by a number of figures 

 engraved with care, of which more than a hundred represent the 

 ploughing instruments of the Chinese, and the machines which they 

 make use of for the irrigation of the fields. The part which I 

 have translated occupies books LXXII, LXXVI. 



The reader will be able to form an idea of the immense riches of 

 the Chinese literature, by learning that the agricultural collections, 

 entitled Cheou-chi-thong-kao, from which my translation is extracted, 

 made a part of the library of the most estimable works in China, 

 of which the publication was ordered in 1773, by the Emperor 

 Khien-long, and which, according to the decree of this prince, was 

 composed of a hundred and sixty thousand volumes. This collection 



