18 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



China had already possessed for some thousands of 

 years a flourishing agriculture and even horticulture, 

 when she entered for the first time into relations with 

 Western Asia, by the mission of Chang-Kien, during the 

 reign of the Emperor Wu-ti, in the second century before 

 the Christian era. The records, known as Pent-sao, 

 written in our Middle Ages, state that he brought back 

 the bean, the cucumber, the lucern,. the saffron, the 

 sesame, the walnut, the pea, spinach, the water-melon, 

 and other western plants,^ then unknown to the Chinese. 

 Chang-Kien, it will be observed, was no ordinary ambas- 

 sador. He considerably enlarged the geographical know- 

 ledge, and ' improved the economic condition of his 

 countrymen. It is true that he was constrained to dwell 

 ten years in the West, and that he belonged to an already 

 civilized people, one of whose emperors had, 2700 B.C., 

 consecrated with imposing ceremonies the cultivation of 

 certain plants. The Mongolians were too barbarous, and 

 came from too cold a country, to have been able to intro- 

 duce many useful species into China; but when we 

 consider the origin of the peach and the apricot, we shall 

 see that these plants were brought into China from 

 Western Asia, probably by isolated travellers, merchants 

 or others, who passed north of the Himalayas. A few 

 species spread in the same way into China from the 

 West before the embassy of Chang-Kien. 



Regular communication between China and India 

 only began in the time of Chang-Kien, and by the cir- 

 cuitous way of Bactriana;^ but gradual transmissions 

 from place to place may have been effected through the 

 Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. The writers of 

 Northern China may have been ignorant of them, and 

 especially since the southern provinces were only united 

 to the empire in the second century before Christ.^ 



Regular communications between China and Japan 

 only took place about the year 57 of our era, when 

 an ambassador was sent; and the Chinese had no real 

 knowledge of their eastern neighbours until the third 



' Bretschneider. On the Btudy and Value, etc., p. 15. 

 2 Ihid.' « JUd., p. 23. 



