ORDINARY MEETING. 
THE PRESIDENT, SIR G. GABRIEL STOKES, BART., M.P., P.R.S., 
IN THE CHAIR. 
The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the 
following Paper was read by the Author :— 
CHINESE CHRONOLOGY.* By Rev. JAMES LEGGE, 
M.A., &c., Professor of Chinese in the University of 
Oxford. 
The Historical Department of Chinese Literature. 
£. ie fistorical is the second, and to my mind the most 
satisfactory, of the four departments into which the 
Chinese divide their national literature.t We have in what 
are called “The Twenty-four Dynastic Histories ” records 
‘coming down to the year 1643 of our Christian era, and pro- 
fessing to extend over a space of 4,340 years, going back 
to the 4,587th year from our present A.D. 1890. These 
records are disposed in 3,264 books or chapters. My own 
copy of them, bound in English fashion, forms 73 portly 
volumes of imperial octavo size. If we can put faith in 
the ordinary Chinese tables of chronology, Hwang Ti, 
* Read in 25th Session, Paper and discussion finally revised May, 1892. 
+ Classics ; History ; Philosophy and the Arts; and Poetry and the 
Belles Lettres. See Wylie’s General Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 1. 
F 
