62 REV. PROFESSOR JAMES LEGGE, M.A., ON 
years before he died. The whole period is called that of the 
Ch’un Chit, or Sprmg and Autumn, from the name which he 
adopted for his work. The chronicle contains the record of 
36 eclipses of the sun, as occurring during the period, of 
which 32 have been verified by calculation so far as the 
years and days assigned to them are concerned. The 
month of some of them is not correctly given, but I will 
show, ere we have done, that what seems to be an error of 
the month confirms the genuineness of the entries. Of the 
other four, which are erroneously reported, I need not speak. 
The error in regard to them may also be, I believe, satisfac- 
torily accounted for; but here are 32 dates in that space of 
242 years about which there can be no dispute. The first 
eclipse took place on February 14th, 720, and the next entry 
in the chronicle is that in the month after kmg Ping died. 
The first year of his successor, king Hwan is thus determined 
to have been B.c. 719, as stated in the history. In a similar 
way we are abie to fix the dates of eleven other sovereigns, 
bringing us to king Chang, who came to the throne in B.c. 519. 
After king Ching we have not the same astronomical aids 
in verifying the chronology given by Chien, but other 
sources of certainty are thenceforth multiplied; and I may 
venture to say that of no ancient history is the chronology 
so well authenticated as that of China since the era of Kung- 
Ho, B.c. 842. 
The Annalistic Histories, and the Dates in them. 
7. I may also say that the great historians of the country 
have not been forward or anxious to push the dates of their 
early records to a remote antiquity, though there is a general 
impression or suspicion to that effect among European 
writers. Our knowledge of China is derived mainly from 
Father de Mailla’s Histoire Générale de la Chine, published at 
Paris in 1777, andwhich was translated from Chit Hsi’s “ T’ung 
Chien Kang Mi,” the preface to which is dated in A.p, 1172. 
This work was a reconstruction and condensation of another 
completed in A.D. 1084, by Sze-ma Kwang, a distinguished 
statesman and author of our 11th century. ‘They are both 
coustructed on a different system from the dynastic histories, | 
beng Annals digested under Headings and Details, after the 
pattern of Confucius’s “Ch’un Chit” and the three well- 
known supplements to it. All that ability and research could 
do for the history of China seems to be accomplished in these 
two works. Chi Hsi tells us, however, that when Kwang 
