( 1 ) 
The object of the following pages is to 
show in what manner the Chinese treat 
natural science and specially botany, and 
what advantage can be drawn by Euro- 
pean savants from the study of Chinese 
botanical works. As the principal works 
of the Chinese on Natural History have 
properly a medical bearing, I shall in 
criticising those works, occasionally make 
a few remarks also on Chinese therapeu- 
tics. Finally, I intend to give some char- 
acteristic specimens of Chinese descrip- 
tions of plants and add also a few Chinese 
woodcuts. 
The Chinese knowledge of plants is as 
old as their medicine and agriculture and 
dated from remote antiquity. In ancient 
Greece the first botanists were the gather- 
ers of medical plants. In the same man- 
ner the ancient Chinese got acquainted 
with plants for the most part in their ap- 
plication to medical purposes. There is 
a tradition among the Chinese, that the 
Emperor Shen-nung, who reigned about 
2700 B. C., is the Father of Agriculture 
and Medicine. He sowed first the five 
kinds of corns (v. i.) and put together 
the first treatise on medical plants in a 
work known as i# & $ ^ g 
Shen-nung -pen-ts l ao -king, Classical her- 
bal of Shen-nung (generally quoted by 
Chinese authors under the name pen-king), 
which became the foundation of all the 
later works on the same subject. This is 
a small work of 3 chapters, and enume- 
rates according to the Pen-ts‘ao in all, 
347 medicines. 239 of them are plants, 
for the most part wild growing plants, 
but only very few cultivated ones. It 
follows from the accounts given by Li- 
shi-chen of this work (Preface of the 
Pen-ts‘ao-kang-mu), that at first it exist- 
ed only in verbal tradition. It is not 
known at what time the Shen-nung-pen" 
ts‘ao was first written down, but there 
can be no doubt that it is one of the most 
ancient documents of Chinese materia 
medica. 
Another very ancient work, which 
gives accounts of plants, known by the 
Chinese in ancient times, is the ||| 
Rh-ya , a dictionary of terms used in Chi- 
nese ancient writings, which according to 
tradition has been handed down in part 
from the 12th century B. C. The great- 
er part however is attributed to Tsu-sia, 
a disciple of Confucius. It is divided 
into 19 sections. The greater half of the 
work treats of natural objects. There is 
an enumeration of nearly 300 plants and 
as many animals of which also drawings 
are given. The Rh-ya is commented by 
Ko-po in the 4th century. 
The first purely botanical work which ap- 
peared in China seems to be the MRW- 
Nan-fang-ts l ao-mu-ch l uang by 
%% Ki-han, an author of the Tsin 
dynasty (265-419). It is divided into 4 
divisions, herbs, trees, fruits and bamboos, 
and contains in toto the description of 79 
plants of Southern China. 
The Chinese works on materia medica 
and plants from the 6th to the 16th 
century are very numerous. The epoch 
of the T‘ang (618-907) and the Sung 
(960-1280) especially was very produc- 
tive in writers in this department. I can- 
not here enter into an enumeration of all 
their works. It would be useless, more- 
over, as I intend to speak of the well- 
known treatise on Chinese ma.teria medica 
Pen-ts l ao-kang-mu , for it 
is the type of all the Chinese productions 
of this class. Li-slhi-chen, the 
celebrated author of the Pen -ts‘ao-kang- 
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