The succinct account of the natural history of China given by Sir John Davis in 1836, contained nearly all the popular notices of much value then known, and need not be repeated, while summarizing the items derived from other and later sources. Malte-Brun observed long ago, “That of even the more general, and, according to the usual estimate, the more important features of that vast sovereignty, we owe whatever knowledge we have obtained to some ambassadors who have seen the courts and the great roads—to certain merchants who have inhabited a suburb of a frontier town—and to several missionaries who, generally more credulous than discriminating, have contrived to penetrate in various directions into the interior.” The volumes upon China in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library contain the best digest of what was known forty years since on this subject. The botanical collections of Robert Fortune in 1844-1849, and those of Col. Champion at Hongkong, have been studied by Bentham, while the later researches of Hance, Bunge and Maximowitch have brought many new forms to notice. In geology, Pumpelly, Kingsmill, Bickmore, and Baron Richthofen have greatly enlarged and certified our knowledge by their travels and memoirs; while Père David, Col. Prejevalsky, Swinhoe, Stimpson, and Sir John Richardson have added hundreds of new species to the scientific fauna of the Empire.

Personal investigation is particularly necessary in all that relates to the geology and fossils of a country, and the knowledge possessed on these heads is, it must be conceded, still meagre, though now sufficient to convey a general idea of the formations, deposits, and contents of the mountains and mines, as well as the agencies at work in modifying the surface of this land. The descriptions and observed facts recorded in native books may furnish valuable hints when they can be compared with the places and productions, for at present the difficulty of explaining terms used, and understanding the processes described, render these treatises hard to translate. The empirical character of Chinese science compels a careful sifting of all its facts and speculations by comparisons with nature, while the amount of real information contained in medical, topographical, and itinerant works render them always worth examining. Large regions still await careful examination in every part of the Empire; and it will be well for the Chinese Government if no tempting metallic deposits are found to test its strength to protect and work them for its own benefit. But in mere science it cannot be doubted that so peculiar a part of the world as the plateau of Central Asia will, when thoroughly examined, solve many problems relating to geology, and disclose many important facts to illustrate the obscure phenomena of other parts of the world.

A few notices of geological formations furnished in the writings of travellers, have already been given in the geographical account of the provinces. The summary published by Davis is a well digested survey of the observations collected by the gentlemen attached to the embassies.[167]

The loess-beds, covering a great portion of Northern China, are among the most peculiar natural phenomena and interesting fields for geological investigation on the world’s surface. Since attention was first directed to this deposit by Pumpelly, in 1864, its formation and extent have been more carefully examined by other geologists, whose hypotheses are now pretty generally discarded for that of Baron von Richthofen. The loess territory begins, at its eastern limit, with the foot hills of the great alluvial plane. From this rises a terrace of from 90 to 250 feet in height, consisting entirely of loess, and westward of it, in a nearly north and south line, stretches the Tai-hang shan, or dividing range between the alluvial land and the hill country of Shansí. An almost uninterrupted loess-covered country extends west of this line to the Koko-nor and head-waters of the Yellow River. On the north the formation can be traced from the vicinity of Kalgan, along the water-shed of the Mongolian steppes, and into the desert beyond the Ala shan. Toward the south its limits are less sharply defined; though covering all the country of the Wei basin (in Shensí), none is found in Sz’chuen, due south of this valley, but it appears in parts of Honan and Eastern Shantung. Excepting occasional spurs and isolated spots—as at Nanking and the Lakes Poyang and Tungting—loess may be considered as ending everywhere on the north side of the Yangtsz’ valley, and, roughly speaking, to cover the parallelogram between longs. 99° and 115°, and lats. 33° and 41°. The district within China Proper represents a territory half as large again as that of the German Empire, while outside of the Provinces there is reason to believe that loess spreads far toward the east and north. In the Wu-tai shan (Shansí), Richthofen observed this deposit to a height of 7,200 feet above the sea, and supposes that it may occur at higher levels.

The term loess, now generally accepted, has been used to designate a tertiary deposit appearing in the Rhine valley and several isolated sections of Europe; its formation has heretofore been ascribed to glaciers, but its enormous extent and thickness in China demand some other origin. The substance is a brownish colored earth, extremely porous, and when dry easily powdered between the fingers, when it becomes an impalpable dust that may be rubbed into the pores of the skin. Its particles are somewhat angular in shape, the lumps varying from the size of a peanut to a foot in length, whose appearance warrants the peculiarly appropriate Chinese name meaning ‘ginger stones.’ After washing, the stuff is readily disintegrated, and spread far and wide by rivers during their freshets; Kingsmill[168] states that a number of specimens which crumbled in the moist air of a Shanghai summer, rearranged themselves afterward in the bottom of a drawer in which they had been placed. Every atom of loess is perforated by small tubes, usually very minute, circulating after the manner of root-fibres, and lined with a thin coating of carbonate of lime. The direction of these little canals being always from above downward, cleavage in the loess mass, irrespective of its size, is invariably vertical, while from the same cause surface water never collects in the form of rain puddles or lakes, but sinks at once to the local water level.

One of the most striking, as well as important phenomena of this formation is the perpendicular splitting of its mass into sudden and multitudinous clefts that cut up the country in every direction, and render observation, as well as travel, often exceedingly difficult. The cliffs, caused by erosion, vary from cracks measured by inches to cañons half a mile wide and hundreds of feet deep; they branch out in every direction, ramifying through the country after the manner of tree-roots in the soil—from each root a rootlet, and from these other small fibres—until the system of passages develops into a labyrinth of far-reaching and intermingling lanes. Were the loess throughout of the uniform structure seen in single clefts, such a region would indeed be absolutely impassable, the vertical banks becoming precipices of often more than a thousand feet. The fact, however, that loess exhibits all over a terrace formation, renders its surface not only habitable, but highly convenient for agricultural purposes; it has given rise, moreover, to the theory advanced by Kingsmill and some others, of its stratification, and from this a proof of its origin as a marine deposit. Richthofen argues that these apparent layers of loess are due to external conditions, as of rocks and débris sliding from surrounding hillsides upon the loess as it sifted into the basin or valley, thus interrupting the homogeneity of the gradually rising deposit. In the sides of gorges near the mountains are seen layers of coarse débris which, in going toward the valley, become finer, while the layers themselves are thinner and separated by an increasing vertical distance; along these rubble beds are numerous calcareous concretions which stand upright. These are then the terrace-forming layers which, by their resistance to the action of water, cause the broken chasms and step-like contour of the loess regions. Each bank does indeed cleave vertically, sometimes—since the erosion works from below—leaving an overhanging bank; but meeting with this horizontal layer of marl stones, the abrasion is interrupted, and a ledge is made. Falling clods upon such spaces are gradually spread over their surfaces by natural action, converting them into rich fields. When seen from a height in good seasons, these systems of terraces present an endless succession of green fields and growing crops; viewed from the deep cut of a road below, the traveller sees nothing but yellow walls of loam and dusty tiers of loess ridges. As may be readily imagined, a country of this nature exhibits many landscapes of unrivalled picturesqueness, especially when lofty crags, which some variation in the water-course has left as giant guardsmen in fertile river valleys, stand out in bold relief against the green background of neighboring hills and a fruitful alluvial bottom, or when an opening of some ascending pass allows the eye to range over leagues of sharp-cut ridges and teaming crops, the work of the careful cultivator.

The extreme ease with which loess is cut away tends at times to seriously embarrass traffic. Dust made by the cart-wheels on a highway is taken up by strong winds during the dry season and blown over the surrounding lands, much after the manner in which it was originally deposited here. This action continued over centuries, and assisted by occasional deluges of rain, which find a ready channel in the road-bed, has hollowed the country routes into depressions of often 50 or 100 feet, where the passenger may ride for miles without obtaining a glimpse of the surrounding scenery. Lieutenant Kreitner, of the Széchenyí exploring expedition, illustrates,[169] in a personal experience in Shansí, the difficulty and danger of leaving these deep cuts; after scrambling for miles along the broken loess above the road, he only regained it when a further passage was cut off by a precipice on the one side, while a jump of some 30 feet into the beaten track below awaited him on the other. Difficult as may be such a territory for roads and the purposes of trade, the advantages to a farmer are manifold. Wherever this deposit extends, there the husbandman has an assured harvest, two and even three times in a year. It is easily worked, exceedingly fertile, and submits to constant tillage, with no other manure than a sprinkling of its own loam dug from the nearest bank. But loess performs still another service to its inhabitants. Caves made at the base of its straight clefts afford homes to millions of people in the northern provinces. Choosing an escarpment where the consistency of the earth is greatest, the natives cut for themselves rooms and houses, whose partition walls, cement, bed and furniture are made from the same loess. Whole villages cluster together in a series of adjoining or superimposed chambers, some of which pierce the soil to a depth of often more than 200 feet. In more costly dwellings the terrace or succession of terraces thus perforated are faced with brick, as well as the arching of rooms within. The advantages of such habitations consist as well in imperviousness to changes of temperature without, as in their durability when constructed in properly selected places, many loess dwellings outlasting six or seven generations. The capabilities of defence in a country such as this, where an invading army must inevitably become lost in the tangle of interlacing ways, and where the defenders may always remain concealed, is very suggestive.

There remains, lastly, a peculiar property of loess which is perhaps more important than all other features when measured by its man-serving efficiency. This is the manner in which it brings forth crops without the aid of manure. From a period more than 2,000 years before Christ, to the present day, the province of Shansí has borne the name of Grainery of the Empire, while its fertile soil, hwang-tu, or ‘yellow earth,’ is the origin of the imperial color. Spite of this productiveness, which, in the fourteenth century, caused the Friar Odoric to class it as the second country in the world, its present capacity for raising crops seems to be as great as ever. In the nature of this substance lies the reason for this apparently inexhaustible fecundity. Its remarkably porous structure must indeed cause it to absorb the gases necessary to plant life to a much greater degree than other soils, but the stable production of those mineral substances needful to the yearly succession of crops is in the ground itself. The salts contained more or less in solution at the water level of the region are freed by the capillary action of the loess when rain-water sinks through the spongy mass from above. Surface moisture following the downward direction of the tiny loess tubes establishes a connection with the waters compressed below, when, owing to the law of diffusion, the ingredients, being released, mix with the moisture of the little canals, and are taken from the lowest to the topmost levels, permeating the ground and furnishing nourishment to the plant roots at the surface. It is on account of this curious action of loess that a copious rain-fall is more necessary in North China than elsewhere, for with a dearth of rain the capillary communication from above, below, and vice versa, is interrupted, and vegetation loses both its manure and moisture. Drought and famine are consequently synonymous terms here.

As to the formation and origin of loess, Richthofen’s theory is substantially as follows:[170] The uniform composition of this material over extended areas, coupled with the absence of stratification and of marine or fresh-water organic remains, renders impossible the hypothesis that it is a water deposit. On the other hand, it contains vast quantities of land-shells and the vestiges of animals (mammalia) at every level, both in remarkably perfect condition. Concluding, also, that from the conformation of the neighboring mountain chains and their peculiar weathering, the glacial theory is inadmissible, he advances the supposition that loess is a sub-aërial deposit, and that its fields are the drained analogues of the steppe-basins of Central Asia. They date from a geological era of great dryness, before the existence of the Yellow and other rivers of the northern provinces. As the rocks and hills of the highlands disintegrated, the sand was removed, not by water-courses seaward, but by the high winds ranging over a treeless desert landward, until the dust settled in the grass-covered districts of what is at present China Proper. New vegetation was at once nourished, while its roots were raised by the constantly arriving deposit; the decay of old roots produced the lime-lined canals which impart to this material its peculiar characteristics. Any one who has observed the terrible dust-storms of North China, when the air is filled with an impalpable yellow powder, which leaves its coating upon everything, and often extends, in a fog-like cloud, hundreds of miles to sea, will understand the power of this action during many thousand years. This deposition received the shells and bones of innumerable animals, while the dissolved solutions contained in its bulk stayed therein, or saturated the water of small lakes. By the sinking of mountain chains in the south, rain-clouds emptied themselves over this region with much greater frequency, and gradually the system became drained, the erosion working backward from the coast, slowly cutting into one basin after another. With the sinking of its salts to lower levels, unexampled richness was added to the wonderful topography of this peculiar formation.[171]

Pumpelly, while accepting this ingenious theory in place of his own (that of a fresh-water lake deposit), adds that the supply of loess might have been materially increased by the vast mers-de-glace of High Asia and the Tien shan, whose streams have for ages transported the products of glacial attrition into Central Asia and Northwest China. Again, he insists that Richthofen has not given importance enough to the parting planes, wrongly considered by his predecessors as planes of stratification. “These,” he says, “account for the marginal layers of débris brought down from the mountains. And the continuous and more abundant growth of grasses at one plane would produce a modification of the soil structurally and chemically, which superincumbent accumulations could never efface. It should seem probable that we have herein, also, the explanation of the calcareous concretions which abound along these planes; for the greater amount of carbonic acid generated by the slow decay of this vegetation would, by forming a bicarbonate, give to the lime the mobility necessary to produce the concretions.”

The metallic and mineral productions used in the arts comprise nearly everything found in other countries, and the common ones are furnished in such abundance, and at such rates, as conclusively prove them to be plenty and easily worked. The careful digest of observations published by Pumpelly through the Smithsonian Institution, carries out this remark, and indicates the vast field still to be explored. Coal exists in every province in China, and Pumpelly enumerates seventy-four localities which have been ascertained. Marco Polo’s well-known notice of its use shows that the people had long employed it: “It is a fact that all over the country of Cathay there is a kind of black stone existing in beds in the mountains, which they dig out and burn like firewood. It is true that they have plenty of wood also, but they do not burn it, because those stones burn better and cost less.”[172] This mineral seems to have been unknown in Europe till after the return of the Venetian to his native land, while it was employed before the Christian era in China, and probably in very ancient times, if the accessible deposits in Shensí then cropped out in its eroded gorges, as represented by Richthofen. The few fossil plants hitherto examined indicate that the mass of these deposits are of the Mesozoic age. The mode of working the coal mines is described by Pumpelly,[173] and was probably no worse two thousand five hundred years ago. Want of machinery for draining them prevents the miners from going much below the water-level, and a rain-storm will sometimes flood and ruin a shaft. An inclined plane seldom takes the workmen more than a hundred feet below the level of the mouth, and then a horizontal gallery conducts him to the end of the mine. Some water is bailed out by buckets handed from one level up to another at the top, and the coal is carried out in baskets on the miners’ backs, or dragged in sleds over smooth, round sticks along passages too low for the coolies to do better than crawl as they work. Mr. Pumpelly found the gallery of one mine near Peking so low that he had to crawl the whole distance (six thousand feet) to see its construction, and when he emerged into daylight, with his knees nearly skinned, ascertained that the workmen padded theirs. The timbering is very expensive, yet, with all drawbacks, the coal sells, at the pit’s mouth, for $2.00 down to 50 cents a ton. The mines, lying on the slopes of the plateau reaching from near Corea to the Yellow River, supply the plain with cheap and excellent fuel.

Blakiston gives an account of the manner in which coal is worked on the Upper Yangtsz’, near the town of Süchau: “Having to be got out at a great height up in the cliff, very thick hawsers, made of plaited bamboo, are tightly stretched from the mouth, or near the mouth, of the working gallery, to a space near the water where the coal can be deposited. These ropes are in pairs, and large pannier-shaped baskets are made to traverse on them, a rope passing from one over a large wheel at the upper landing, and down again to the other, so that the full basket going down pulls the empty one up, the velocity being regulated by a kind of brake on the wheel at the top. At some places the height at which the coal is worked is so great that two or more of these contrivances are used, one taking to a landing half way down, and another from thence to the river. The hawsers are kept taut by a windlass for that purpose at the bottom.”[174] This useful mineral appears to be abundant throughout Sz’chuen Province, and is used here much less sparingly than in the east. With such inexpensive methods of getting coal to the water-courses, foreign machinery can hardly be expected to reduce its price very materially.

The economical use of coal in the household and the arts has been carried to great perfection. Anthracite is powdered and mixed with wet clay, earth, sawdust or dung, according to the exigencies of the case, in the proportion of about seven to one; the balls thus made are dried in the sun. The brick-beds (kang) are effective means of warming the house, and the hand furnaces enable the poor to cook with these balls—aided by a little charcoal or kindlings—at a trifling expense. This form of consumption is common north of the Yellow River, and brings coal within reach of multitudes who otherwise would suffer and starve. Bituminous, brown, and other varieties of coal occur in the same abundance and extent as in other great areas, giving promise of adequate supplies for future ages. The coal worked on the Peh kiang, in Kwangtung, contains sulphur, and is employed in the manufacture of copperas.[175]

Crystallized gypsum is brought from the northwest of the province to Canton, and is ground to powder in mills; plaster of Paris and other forms of this sulphate are common all over China. It is not used as a manure, but the flour is mixed with wood-oil to form a cement for paying the seams of boats after they have been caulked. The powder is employed as a dentifrice, a cosmetic, and a medicine, and sometimes, also, is boiled to make a gruel in fevers, under the idea that it is cooling. The bakers who supplied the English troops at Amoy, in 1843, occasionally put it into the bread to make it heavier, but not, as was erroneously charged upon them, with any design of poisoning their customers, for they do not think it noxious; its employment in coloring green tea, and adulterating powdered sugar, is also explainable by other motives than a wish to injure the consumers.

Limestone is abundant at Canton, both common clouded marble and blue limestone; the last is extensively used in the artificial rockwork of gardens. Even if the Cantonese knew of the existence of lime in limestone, which they generally do not, the expense of fuel for calcining it would prevent their burning it while oyster-shells are so abundant in that region. In other provinces stone-lime is burned, by the aid of coal, in small kilns. The fine marble quarried near Peking is regarded as fit alone for imperial uses, and is seen only in such places as the Altar of Heaven and palace grounds. The marble used for floors is a fissile crystallized limestone, unsusceptible of polish; no statues or ornaments are sculptured from this mineral, but slabs are sometimes wrought out, and the surfaces curiously stained and corroded with acids, forming rude representations of animals or other figures, so as to convey the appearance of natural markings. Some of these simulated petrifactions are exceedingly well done. Slabs of argillaceous slate are also chosen with reference to their layers, and treated in the same manner. An excellent granite is used about Canton and Amoy for building, and no people exceed the Chinese in cutting it. Large slabs are split out by wooden wedges, cut for basements and foundations, and laid in a beautiful manner; pillars are also hewn from single stones of different shapes, though of no extraordinary dimensions, and their shafts embellished with inscriptions. Ornamental walls are frequently formed of large slabs set in posts, like panels, the outer faces of which are beautifully carved with figures representing a landscape or procession. Red and gray sandstone, gneiss, mica slate, and other species of rock, are also worked for pavements and walls.

Nitre is cheap and common enough in the northern provinces to obviate any fear of its being smuggled into the country from abroad; it is obtained in Chihlí by lixiviating the soil, and furnishes material for the manufacture of gunpowder. A lye is obtained from ashes, which partially serves the purposes of soap; but the people are still ignorant of the processes necessary for manufacturing it. Fourteen localities of alum are given in Pumpelly’s list, but the greatest supply for the eastern provinces comes from deposits of shale, in Ping-yang hien, in Chehkiang, which produces about six thousand tons annually. It is used mostly by the dyers, also to purify turbid water, and whiten paper. Other earthy salts are known and used, as borax, sal-ammoniac (which is collected in Mongolia and Ílí from lakes and the vicinity of extinct volcanoes), and blue and white vitriol, obtained by roasting pyrites. Common salt is procured along the eastern and southern coasts by evaporating sea-water, rock-salt not having been noticed; in the western provinces and Shansí, it is obtained from artesian wells and lakes as cheaply as from the ocean; in Tsing-yen hien, in Central Sz’chuen, two hundred and thirty-seven wells are worked. At Chusan the sea-water is so turbid that the inhabitants filter it through clay, afterward evaporating the water.

The minerals heretofore found in China have, for the most part, been such as have attracted the attention of the natives, and collected by them for curiosity or sale. The skilful manner in which their lapidaries cut crystal, agate, and other quartzose minerals, is well known.[176] The corundum used for polishing and finishing these carvings occurs in China, but a good deal of emery in powder is obtained from Borneo. A composition of granular corundum and gum-lac is usually employed by workmen in order to produce the highest lustre of which the stones are capable. The three varieties of the silicate of alumina, called jade, nephrite, and jadeite by mineralogists, are all named yuh by the Chinese, a word which is applied to a vast variety of stones—white marble, ruby, and cornelian all coming under it—and therefore not easy to define. Jade has long been known in Europe as a variety of jasper, its separation from that stone into a species by itself being of comparatively recent origin. Since the third edition of Boetius, in 1647, the two minerals have been regarded as entirely distinct. Its value in the eyes of the Chinese depends chiefly upon its sonorousness and color. The costliest specimens are brought from Yunnan and Khoten; a greenish-white color is the most highly prized, a plain color of any shade being of less value. A cargo of this mineral was once imported into Canton from New Holland, but the Chinese would not purchase it, owing to a fancy taken against its origin and color. The patient toil of the workers in this hard mineral is only equalled by the prodigious admiration with which it is regarded; both fairly exhibit the singular taste and skill of the Chinese. Its color is usually a greenish-white, or grayish-green and dark grass-green; internally it is scarcely glimmering. Its fracture is splintery; splinters white; mass semi-transparent and cloudy; it scratches glass strongly, and can itself generally be scratched by flint or quartz, but while not excessively hard it is remarkable for toughness. The stone when freshly broken is less hard than after a short exposure. Specific gravity from 2.9 to 3.1.[177] Fischer (pp. 314-318) gives some one hundred and fifty names as occurring in various authors—ancient and modern—for jade or nephrite.[178] An interesting testimony to the esteem in which this stone was held in China during the middle ages comes from Benedict Goës (1602), who says: “There is no article of traffic more valuable than lumps of a certain transparent kind of marble, which we, from poverty of language, usually call jasper.... Out of this marble they fashion a variety of articles, such as vases, brooches for mantles and girdles, which, when artistically sculptured in flowers and foliage, certainly have an effect of no small magnificence. These marbles (with which the Empire is now overflowing) are called by the Chinese Iusce. There are two kinds of it; the first and more valuable is got out of the river at Cotan, almost in the same way in which divers fish for gems, and this is usually extracted in pieces about as big as large flints. The other and inferior kind is excavated from the mountains.” The ruby, diamond, amethyst, sapphire, topaz, pink tourmaline, lapis-lazuli,[179] turquoises, beryl, garnet, opal, agate, and other stones, are known and most of them used in jewelry. A ruby brought from Peking is noticed by Bell as having been valued in Europe at $50,000. The seals of the Boards are in many instances cut on valuable stones, and private persons take great pride in quartz or jade seals, with their names carved on them; lignite and jet are likewise employed for cheaper ornaments, of which all classes are fond.

All the common metals, except platina, are found in China, and the supply would be sufficient for all the purposes of the inhabitants, if they could avail themselves of the improvements adopted in other countries in blasting, mining, etc. The importations of iron, lead, tin, and quicksilver, are gradually increasing, but they form only a small proportion of the amount used throughout the Empire, especially of the two first named; iron finds its way in because of its convenient forms more than its cheapness. The careful examination of Chinese topographical works by Pumpelly,[180] records the leading localities of iron in every province, and where copper, tin, lead, silver, and quicksilver have been observed; he also mentions fifty-two places producing gold in various forms, most of them in Sz’chuen. The rumor of gold-washings occurring not far from Chifu, in Shantung, caused much excitement in 1868, but they were soon found to be not worth the labor. Gold has never been used as coin in China, but is wrought into jewelry; most of it is consumed in gilding and exported to India as bullion, in the shape of small bars or coarse leaves.

Silver is mentioned in sixty-three localities by the same author; large amounts are brought from Yunnan, and the mines in that region must be both extensive and easily worked to afford such large quantities as have been exported. The working of both gold and silver mines has been said to be prohibited, but this interdiction is rather a government monopoly of the mines than an injunction upon working those which are known. The importation of gold into China during the two centuries the trade has been opened, does not probably equal the exportation which has taken place since the commencement of the opium trade. It is altogether improbable that the Chinese are acquainted with the properties of quicksilver in separating these two metals from their ores, though its consumption in making vermilion and looking-glasses calls for over two thousand flasks yearly at Canton. Cinnabar occurs in Kweichau and Shensí and furnishes most of the “water silver,” as the Chinese call it, by a rude process of burning brushwood in the wells, and collecting the metal after condensation.

Copper is used for manufacturing coin, bells, bronze articles, domestic and cooking utensils, cannon, gongs, and brass-foil. It is found pure in some instances, and the sulphuret, the blue and green carbonates, pyrities, and other ores are worked; malachite is ground for a paint. It occurs in every province, and is specially rich in Shansí and Kweichau. The ores of zinc and copper in Yunnan and Sz’chuen furnish spelter, and the peculiar alloy known as white copper or argentan, containing in addition tin, iron, nickel, and lead. So much use indicates large deposits of the ores. Tin is rather abundant, but lead is more common; thirty-nine localities of the first are mentioned, some of which are probably zinc ores, as the Chinese confound tin and zinc under one generic name. Lead occurs with silver in many places; twenty-four mines are mentioned in Pumpelly’s list, and those in Fuhkien are rich; but the extensive importations prove that its reduction is too expensive to compete with the foreign.

Realgar is quite common, this and orpiment being used as paints; statuettes and other articles are carved from the former, while arsenic is used in agriculture to quicken grain and preserve it from insects. Amber and fossilized copal are collected in several localities; the first is much employed in the making of court necklaces and hair ornaments. The fei-tsui or jadeite is the most prized of the semi-precious stones; it is cut into ear-rings, finger-rings, necklaces, etc. Pumpelly mentions pieces of this mineral set in relics obtained from tombs in Mexico, though no locality where it abounds has yet been found in America. Lapis-lazuli is employed in painting upon copper and porcelain ware; this mineral is obtained in Chehkiang and Kansuh; jadeite, topaz, and other fine stones are most plenty in Yunnan. A few minerals and fossils have been noticed in the vicinity and shops at Canton, but China thus far has furnished very few petrifactions in any strata. Coarse epidote occurs at Macao, and tungstate of iron has been noticed in the quartz rocks at Hongkong. Petrified crabs (macrophthalmus) have been brought to Canton from Hainan, which are prized by the natives for their supposed medicinal qualities. Scientists have hitherto described a score or more species of Devonian shells, and recognized fragments of the hyena, tapir, rhinoceros, and stegedon, among some other doubtful vertebratæ in the “dragon’s bones” sold in medicine shops; but further examinations will doubtless increase the list. Orthoceratites and bivalve shells of various kinds are noticed in Chinese books as being found in rocks, and fossil bones of huge size in caves and river banks.

There are many hot springs and other indications of volcanic action along the southern acclivities of the table land in the provinces of Shensí and Sz’chuen; and at Jeh-ho, in Chihlí, there are thermal springs to which invalids resort. The Ho tsing, or Fire wells, in Sz’chuen are apertures resembling artesian springs, sunk in the rock to a depth of one thousand five hundred or one thousand eight hundred feet, whilst their breadth does not exceed five or six inches. This is a work of great difficulty, and requires in some cases the labor of two or three years. The water procured from them contains a fifth part of salt, which is very acrid, and mixed with much nitre. When a lighted torch is applied to the mouth of some of those which have no water, fire is produced with great violence and a noise like thunder, bursting out into a flame twenty or thirty feet high, and which cannot be extinguished without great danger and expense. The gas has a bituminous smell, and burns with a bluish flame and a quantity of thick, black smoke. It is conducted under boilers in bamboos, and employed in evaporating the salt-water from the other springs.[181] Besides the gaseous and aqueous springs in these provinces, there are others possessing different qualities, some sulphurous and others chalybeate, found in Shansí and along the banks of the Yellow River. Sulphur occurs, as has been noted, in great abundance in Formosa, and is purified for powder manufacturers.

The animal and vegetable productions of the extensive regions under the sway of the Emperor of China include a great variety of types of different families. On the south the islands of Hainan and Formosa, and parts of the adjacent coasts, slightly partake of a tropical character, exhibiting in the cocoanuts, plantains, and peppers, the parrots, lemurs, and monkeys, decided indications of an equatorial climate. From the eastern coast across through the country to the northwest provinces occur mountain ranges of gradually increasing elevation, interspersed with intervales and alluvial plateaus and bottoms, lakes and rivers, plains and hills, each presenting its peculiar productions, both wild and cultivated, in great variety and abundance. The southern ascent of the high land of Mongolia, the uncultivated wilds of Manchuria, the barren wastes of the desert of Gobi, with its salt lakes, glaciers, extinct volcanoes, and isolated mountain ranges; and lastly the stupendous chains and valleys of Tibet, Koko-nor, and Kwănlun all differ from each other in the character of their productions. In one or the other division, every variety of soil, position, and temperature occur which are known on the globe; and what has been ascertained within the past fifteen years by enterprising naturalists is an earnest of future greater discoveries.

Of the quadrumanous order of animals, there are several species. The Chinese are skilful in teaching the smaller kinds of monkeys various tricks, but M. Breton’s picture of their adroitness and usefulness in picking tea in Shantung from plants growing on otherwise inaccessible acclivities, is a fair instance of one of the odd stories furnished by travellers about China, inasmuch as no tea grows in Shantung, and monkeys are taught more profitable tricks.[182] One of the most remarkable animals of this tribe is the douc, or Cochinchinese monkey (Semnopithecus nemæus). It is a large species of great rarity, and remarkable for the variety of colors with which it is adorned. Its body is about two feet long, and when standing in an upright position its height is considerably greater. The face is of an orange color, and flattened in its form. A dark band runs across the front of the forehead, and the sides of the countenance are bounded by long spreading yellowish tufts of hair. The body and upper parts of the forearms are brownish gray, the lower portions of the arms, from the elbows to the wrists, being white; its hands and thighs are black, and the legs of a bright red color, while the tail and a large triangular spot above it are pure white. Such a creature matches well, for its grotesque and variegated appearance, with the mandarin duck and gold fish, also peculiar to China.

Chinese books speak of several species of this family, and small kinds occur in all the provinces. M. David has recently added two novelties to the list from his acquisitions in Eastern Koko-nor, well fitted for that cold region by their abundant hair. The Rhinopithecus roxellanæ inhabits the alpine forests, nearly two miles high, where it subsists on the buds of plants and bamboo shoots laid up for winter supply; its face is greenish, the nose remarkably rétroussé, and its strong, brawny limbs well fitted for the arboreal life it leads; the hair is thick and like a mane on the back, shaded with yellow and white tints. In this respect it is like the Gelada monkey of Abyssinia, and a few others protected in this part of the body from cold. This is no doubt the kind called fí-fí in native books, and once found in flocks along many portions of western China, as these authors declare. Their notices are rather tantalizing, but, now that we have found the animal, are worth quoting: “The fí-fí resembles a man; it is clothed with its hair, runs quick and eats men; it has a human face, long lips, black, hairy body, and turns its heels. It laughs on seeing a man and covers its eyes with its lips; it can talk and its voice resembles a bird. It occurs in Sz’chuen, where it is called jin hiung, or ‘human bear;’ its palms are good eating, and its skin is used; its habit is to turn over stones, seeking for crabs as its food. Its form is like that of the men who live in the Kwănlun Mountains.”

Another large simia (Macacus thibetanus) comes from the same region; it lives in bands like the preceding, but lower down the mountains. A third species of great size was reported to occur in the southwestern part of Sz’chuen, and described as greenish like the Macacus tcheliensis from the hills northwest of Peking—the most northern species of monkey known. The former of these two may possibly be the sing-sing of the Chinese books, though its characteristics involve some confusion of the Macacus and baboon on the part of those writers. Two other species of Macacus, and as many of the gibbons, have been noticed in Hainan, Formosa, and elsewhere in the south.

The singular proboscis monkey (Nasalis laivalus), called khi-doc in Cochinchina and hai-tuh by the Chinese, exhibits a strange profile, part man and part beast, reminding one of the combinations in Da Vinci’s caricatures. It is a large animal, covered with soft yellowish hair tinted with red; the long nose projects in the form of a sloping spatula. The Chinese account says: “Its nose is turned upward, and the tail very long and forked at the end, and that whenever it rains, the animal thrusts the forks into its nose. It goes in herds, and lives in friendship; when one dies, the rest accompany it to burial. Its activity is so great that it runs its head against the trees; its fur is soft and gray, and the face black.”[183]

The Chinese Herbal, from which the preceding extract is taken, describes the bat under various names, such as ‘heavenly rat,’ ‘fairy rat,’ ‘flying rat,’ ‘night swallow,’ and ‘belly wings;’ it also details the various uses made of the animal in medicine, and the extraordinary longevity attained by some of the white species. The bat is in form like a mouse; its body is of an ashy black color; and it has thin fleshy wings, which join the four legs and tail into one. It appears in the summer, but becomes torpid in the winter; on which account, as it eats nothing during that season, and because it has a habit of swallowing its breath, it attains a great age. It has the character of a night rover, not on account of any inability to fly in the day, but it dares not go abroad at that time because it fears a kind of hawk. It subsists on mosquitoes and gnats. It flies with its head downward, because the brain is heavy.[184] This quotation is among the best Chinese descriptions of animals, and shows how little there is to depend upon in them, though not without interest in their notices of habits. Bats are common everywhere, and seem to be regarded with less aversion than in certain other countries. Twenty species belonging to nine genera are given in one list, most of them found in southern China; the wings of some of these measure two feet across; a large sort in Sz’chuen is eaten.