378 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
In succeeding ages there were partial revivals in scientific 
research, and during the Yuen Dynasty (a.d. 1280-1368), an 
algebraic system, possibly derived from the Arab traders who 
at that time began to visit China, was introduced by a native 
writer in a work entitled, “ The Mirror of the Mensuration of 
Circles.” But with the accession of the Ming Emperors (a.d. 
1368) darkness again covered the land, and so completely 
during the following two hundred years were the works of the 
earlier native scholars forgotten, that when the Jesuit mission- 
aries laid bare their stores of European science at the court of 
their patron Kang-hi, the message sounded in the ears of their 
hearers not only as an improvement on the native methods of 
computation and system of astronomy, but as something quite 
new and startling. The road to honour and advancement thus 
thrown open to the missionaries was eagerly trodden by them. 
The Astronomical Board was placed under their direction, and 
the young Emperor, himself a youth of learning and scientific 
attainments, treated them with marked consideration and 
favour. The stimulus, however, thus given to the study of the 
science of numbers led to the reproduction of the native works 
of which we have been speaking, and others of a similar kind ; 
and though it was universally acknowledged that the mission- 
aries had supplied much that was wanting in the native scientific 
systems, they from that time ceased to hold the pre-eminently 
high position they had formerly occupied. Latterly, the spirit 
of scientific enquiry has become very general throughout the 
empire, and the Jesuits have found worthy successors in the 
native authors, who have enriched the literature of their country 
with many learned and valuable works on astronomy and 
mathematics. Quite recently, also, translations of several 
European works on these subjects, notably Mr. Wylie’s edition 
of De Morgan’s “Treatise on Algebra,” Loomis’ “Elements 
of Analytical Greometry, and of the Differential and Integral 
Calculus,” Herschel’s “ Outlines of Astronomy,” as well as several 
original works on mathematics, have been published in China, 
the Joii^t work of foreigners and natives, and have met with 
much favour and support from the literary classes. New editions 
of several of these works have been brought out by wealthy 
natives, among whom Euclid is now almost as much studied 
as among ourselves. 
As was the case with the Egyptians of old, the scientific know- 
ledge, properly so called, of the Chinese is confined almost en- 
tirely to arithmetic and geometry. Of geology, mineralogy, 
pneumatics, electricity and chemistry, they know nothing. In 
antiquity the medical art vies with the knowledge of numbers ; 
but it has been from the beginning, and is now, an art and not 
a science. The voluminous native works on medicine which 
