INTRODUCTION. 



Perhaps the oldest classical reference to the natural 

 history of wild life known to the west is Genesis 1.29: "And 

 God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving 

 creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the 

 earth in the open firamament of heaven." To the Chinese 

 there will come to mind, amongst the earliest of theirs, some 

 of the rhymed ballads contained in the "Book of Odes," for 

 which the outer world as well as the Chinese is indebted 

 to the selective editorial skill of the great deified sage, 

 Confucius. It was he who out of some 3,000 metrical com- 

 positions selected the "Three Hundred" — actually three 

 hundred and five — which he rightly held in such high 

 esteem, and which are still a source of keen delight to my- 

 riads of modern scholars. 



"Have you learnt the Odes?" he one day asked of his 

 son. 



"No," was the reply. 



"Then you will be unfit for the society of intellectual 

 men," was the crushing rejoinder. 



Perhaps the impatient reader will want to know what 

 the "Odes" have to do with the matter under consideration. 

 The answer is ready. Even in the days of Confucius the 

 "Odes" were a mirror of the long lost past. They presented a 

 picture, or rather a series of pictures, of ancient Chinese 

 thought and action. Being true in poetry they were true to 

 nature, and it is here that their connexion with our subject 

 is found. The close student will discover scattered through 

 their pages references to nearly two hnndred plants and 

 animals. Of these roughly a half are allusions to birds, 

 beasts, fishes, and insects. They show that long ages before 

 man thought of the first great Chinese Encyclopaedia, that 

 of Wu Shu, (947-1002 a.d.), which deals largely with natural 

 history, there was that love of nature amongst Chinese 

 observers which has characterized them ever since, and 

 which will by and by be one of the links most closely con- 

 necting them with the purest and best thought of the West. 



I have no desire in these sketches to attempt a 

 systematic and complete scheme of Chinese Natural 

 History. Even the much admired work of M. I'Abbe 



