published in 1783, and has consequently been nearly one hundred years
before an enlightened and approving public.

[*] About 24 cash go to a penny.

Not to dwell upon the remaining portion, devoted to Zoology, and
containing wonderful specimens of various kinds of animals and birds
met with by travellers beyond the Four Seas, we would remark that the
geography of the world, notwithstanding some very fair existing
treatises, is little studied by Chinese at the present day. More works
on topography have been written in Chinese than in probably any other
language, but to say that even these are read is quite another matter.
Geography, properly so called, is almost entirely neglected, and in a
rather extensive circle of literary acquaintances, it has never been
our fortune to meet with a single scholar acquainted with the useful
publications of Catholic or Protestant missionaries--the latter have
not contributed much--except perhaps the mutilated edition of
Verbiest's little handbook.

To describe one is to give a fair idea of all such native works for
the diffusion of knowledge. We found in our little parcel a complete
guide (save the mark!) to the _Fauna_ and _Flora_ of the Celestial
Empire, besides a treatise headed "Philosophy for the Young," in which
children are shown that to work for one's living is better than to be
idle, and that the strength of three men is powerless against _Li_.
Now as _Li_ means "abstract right," and as it is an axiom of Chinese
philosophy that "right in the abstract" does exist, we are gravely
informed that neither the moral or physical violence of any three men
acting in concert can hope to prevail against it. So much for the
state of education in China at the present day, the remedy for which