[234] Williams, Shu King.
[235] Williams, Yih and Ts‘ih.
[236] I am under the impression that the dragons to which Mencius refers were probably alligators, of which one small species still exists, though rare, in the Yang-tsze-kiang. So also we may regard as alligators the dragons referred to above in the annals of the Bamboo Books on the passage of the Kiang by Yu. Mr. Griffis, in his work on Corea, says, “The creature called a-ke, or alligator, capable of devouring a man, is sometimes found in the largest rivers.”
[237] For a full account of this work, see an Article by E. C. Bridgman in Chinese Repository, xviii. (1849), p. 169; and Botanicon Sinicum, by Dr. E. Bretschneider, in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, vol. xvi. 1881.
[238] Notes on Chinese Literature, A. Wylie, Shanghai and London, 1867.
[239] “Bot. Sin.” in Journal of N. China Branch R. A. S., 1881.
[240] Journal Asiatique, Extr. No. 17 (1839).
[241] The three prefaces by these authors are given in extenso in the Appendix to this Chapter.
[242] The reader is referred, for a careful précis of the contents of this valuable work, to an exhaustive paper entitled “Botanicon Sinicum,” in the Journal of North China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, 1881, by E. Bretschneider, M.D.
[243] The character for a hare is very like the character for a devil. The Japanese, in quoting this passage, have fallen into this error.