INTO THi FLORA; OF CHINA. 
3 
of the superiority of western science, and of demonstrating 
to them the accuracy of Europeans in observing natural 
phenomena, and their ingenuity in making the laws of nature 
serviceable to the purposes of industry, economy and the 
arts. The early success enjoyed by the propaganda of the 
Jesuits in China was principally due to the great authority 
they had acquired at the Court of Peking on account of their 
skill in astronomy, physics, chemistry etc. Many of these 
distinguished scholars used to investigate with a strong 
inclination objects of natural history, and thus we find in the 
collections of the letters and memoirs of the Jesuits in China 
a great number of articles treating of mineralogy, zoology, and 
botany, supplying a mass of most valuable information. The 
circumstances, in which they lived among the natives, becoming 
familiar with the language and adopting the native customs, 
gave them many more facilities for gathering information than 
travellers or naturalists of the present time, who are looked 
upon with suspicion, constantly watched, and often molested 
by the people. There are still in the interior of China many 
common Chinese plants, known to us only from the description 
of the Jesuits, as for example the tree, which yields the varnish 
for making the well known Chinese lacquered ware, or the 
Illicium anisatum of China (Loureiro). No specimens of these, 
trees have, as far as I can judge from what has been published 
with respect to Chinese plants, come to the notice of-later 
botanists.*) I need hardly say, that the accounts left by the 
early missionaries, concerning Chinese botany, have for the 
greater part no claim to be considered scientific papers in 
our modern sense. Their descriptions however of the plants 
applied by the natives to economic or other useful purposes, 
and also of wild-growing medicinal and other remarkable 
plants, are generally quite satisfactory and popularly correct. 
The Chinese names are often added. In most of the cases there 
can be no doubt what plant they meant and we are thus enabled 
to supply the respective scientific names, as far as these plants 
are known to botanists. 
It does not seem, that any botanical collection was sent from 
China to Europe by the Jesuit missionaries previous to the 
middle of the 18th century. Father d’Incarville, who resided 
• I shall treat at greater length of these and similar botanical questions 
relating to China in a more comprehensive treatise on Chinese botany, 
which is now in course of preparation. 
