of Peking in 1308, having died there in 1330. Of course there are a few
pictures of legendary peoples, such as the Long-armed Nation, the
One-eyed Nation, the Dog-headed Nation, the Anthropophagi,

"and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

There is also an account of Fusang, the country where grew the famous
plant which some have tried to identify with the Mexican aloe, thus
securing the discovery of America for the Chinese.

The existence of many of these nations is duly recorded by Pliny in his
_Natural History_, in words curiously identical with those we find in
the Chinese records.

Some strange birds and animals are given at the end of this book, the
most interesting of all being an accurate picture of the zebra, here
called the _Fu-lu_, which means "Deer of Happiness," but which is
undoubtedly a rough attempt at _fara_, an old Arabic term for the wild
ass. Now, the zebra being quite unknown in Asia, the puzzle is, how the
Chinese came to be so well acquainted with it at that early date.

The condition of the book is as good as could be expected, after six
hundred years of wear and tear. Each leaf, here and there defective, is
carefully mounted on sheets of stiff paper, and all together very few
characters are really illegible, though sometimes the paper has slipped
upon the printing-block, and has thus given, in several cases, a double
outline.

Alongside of this stands the modern work of the kind, published in 1761,