270 Dr. Cantor on the Flora and Fauna of Chusan. 



superior to those used in the southern provinces, particularly 

 the plough, the winnow, and the chain-pumps. Although 

 the Chinese may be said to be pre-eminently an agricultural 

 nation, and it has been the policy of their government to en- 

 courage and acknowledge agriculture as one of the most 

 honourable pursuits, the eminence it has attained has been 

 somewhat overrated. In the mere mechanical parts, such as the 

 distribution of human labour in the cultivation of rice, and in 

 a few instances of adopting the simplest means, the Chinese 

 may be said to have arrived at perfection ; but in the higher 

 branches the Chinese are far behind the best European rural 

 ceconomists. It has been observed, that the small allotments 

 of land in China must necessarily preclude any attempt at ex- 

 tensive operations, and while the individual is confined to raise 

 a crop barely sufficient to maintain his own family, accommo- 

 dation of the crop to the soil is almost entirely out of the 

 question. As for the rest, nothing can be said of the agricul- 

 ture at Chusan that has not already been noticed elsewhere, 

 with one exception, and that is the unheard of and equally re- 

 pulsive means to which the inhabitants resort to obtain ma- 

 nure for the fields. Suffice it to say, that in Ting-hae the 

 inhabitants make a point of collecting the offal, which in a 

 city it is the first duty to the health of the public to carry 

 away, as it is to decency to hide. Here every house-owner 

 not only makes this a source of traffic, for it is sold to the 

 tillers of the soil, but the consequence of this custom has ma- 

 nifested itself in the social state of the people and obliterated 

 all feeling of decorum*. 



The period of our first occupation of Chusan, from the 

 commencement of July 1840 till March 1841, was too short 

 to afford data sufficient to obtain the annual mean tempera- 



* In a short and interesting topographical account of Chusan, published in 

 the 1 Chinese Repository/ vol. x. p. 328, the following description of Ting- 

 hae is given : — " The city possesses no large gardens or squares, but a con- 

 siderable extent of open ground on the eastern side is devoted to the culti- 

 vation of rice. The canal, which nearly surrounds the city, sends a large 

 branch through a water-gate near the southern gate, which, dividing into 

 many branches, traverses the greater part in all directions. These branches 

 form several large pools of foul stagnant water, into which every description 

 of filth was thrown, and the street-sewers also opening into the canals ren- 

 dered the latter extremely offensive, and during the warm weather caused a 

 most unpleasant smell throughout the city. Added to this source of malaria, 

 great numbers of large jars were placed at the corners of most of the streets 

 and in all vacant places, which were filled with a fermenting mass of animal 

 and vegetable offal, gathered from the houses and preserved for manuring 

 the fields in the neighbourhood ; as may be supposed, in some of those places 

 the stench was dreadful." 



