VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 413 



had collected and made for determining the longitude and latitude of Pekin, 

 &c. This year I have sent to Paris, by two different ways, a memoir, which 

 had been desired of me, concerning the isles of Lequoyo, or Licoukicou, which 

 Kempfer calls Roukou. It is a pretty long one. I had an opportunity of being 

 well informed about these isles ; but there are many things yet wanting to be 

 known. To this memoir I have added some remarks concerning the longitude 

 of Namgazaki, and other places on the south coast of Japan, and the south coast 

 of Coree, with its distance from Japan, and the island of Touyma, which, in 

 the map of Father du Halde, is called Touyla Tao, or Touyla. It should be 

 called Touy Ma. It is the isle Tsutsima. It depends on Japan. I have spoken 

 here with several Coreans, who have been in that island. 



I have already sent to you observations made here to the close of the year 

 1750, and during this year. I now send you others of 1750; and others I in- 

 closed to you at large in 1749 and 1750. I wait for some answer from you; 

 and especially your opinion concerning the manner, in which I ought to dispose 

 my memoirs concerning the Chinese astronomy. I am resolved to put my last 

 hand to that work. But memoirs of that kind ought to be examined by persons 

 intelligent and zealou^like yourself. 



At Petersburgh you must undoubtedly have seen what I wrote to Mr. Bayer 

 about what the Chinese have said concerning the Huns and Turks. Dr. Morti- 

 mer has written to me, that he had received from a nephew of Mons. Fourmont, 

 a small piece on the origin of the Turks and Huns, as drawn from the Chinese 

 books. I shall speak again of that subject in the memoirs which I have of the 

 history of the great dynasty of Tang. There are a great number of very in- 

 teresting things on what the Chinese have delivered at that time concerning the 

 empire of the Persians, and its destruction by the Mahometans; concerning the 

 Mahometans, and the assistance which they gave to Chinese emperors against 

 their rebels; concerning the Christian religion, or the Tatsin, but in very ob- 

 scure terms, concerning the sects and countries of the Indians, Japan, Coree, 

 Tartary, and the countries between China and the Caspian sea, Thibet, and its 

 princes. All these particulars may be of considerable service to unravel the 

 eastern history from the year 500 of Christ to the year 1000 before him, and even 

 much higher. 



There are here a great number of Lamas and Tartars, who have gone from 

 Lassa, the capital of Thibet, to the lakes and mountains, where the sources of 

 the Ganges are, and at Latac, &c. in the country to the north of Thibet and 

 Latac ; but what they say is extremely confused; and this part of geography is 

 still very little known to us here. 



