The third division of kitchen herbs contains five families: 1, offensive pungent plants, as leeks, mustard, ginger; 2, soft and mucilaginous plants, as dandelions, lilies, bamboo sprouts; 3, vegetables producing fruit on the ground, as tomatoes, egg-plants, melons; 4, aquatic vegetables; and 5, mushrooms and fungi. The number of species is one hundred and thirty-three, and some part of each of them is eaten.
The fourth division of fruits contains seven families: 1, the five fruits, the plum, peach, apricot, chestnut, and date (Rhamnus); 2, hill fruits, as the orange, pear, citron, persimmon; 3, foreign fruits, as the cocoanut, líchí, carambola; 4, aromatic fruits, as pepper, cubebs, tea; 5, trailing fruits, as melons, grape, sugar-cane; 6, aquatic fruits, as water caltrops, water lily, water chestnuts, etc.; and 7, fruits not used in medicine, as whampe. In all, one hundred and forty-seven species.
The fifth division of trees has six families: 1, odoriferous trees, as pine, cassia, aloes, camphor; 2, stately trees, as the willow, tamarix, elm, soapberry, palm, poplar, julibrissin or silk tree; 3, luxuriant growing trees, as mulberry, cotton, Cercis, Gardenia, Bombax, Hibiscus; 4, parasites or things attached to trees, as the mistletoe, pachyma, and amber; 5, flexible plants, as bamboo; this family has only four species; 6, includes what the other five exclude, though it might have been thought that the second and third families were sufficiently comprehensive to contain almost all miscellaneous plants. The number of species is one hundred and ninety-eight. All botanical subjects are classified in this manner under five divisions, thirty-one families, and one thousand one hundred and ninety-five species, excluding all fermentable things.
The arrangement of the botanical characters in the language does not correspond so well to this as does that of inorganic substances. The largest group in the language system is tsao, which comprises in general such herbaceous plants as are not used for food. The second, muh, includes all trees or shrubs; and the bamboo, on account of its great usefulness, stands by itself, though the characters mostly denote names of articles made of bamboo. No less than four radicals, viz., rice, wheat, millet, and grain, serve as the heads under which the esculent grasses are arranged; there are consequently many synonymes and superfluous distinctions. One family includes beans, and another legumes; one comprises cucurbitaceous plants, another the alliaceous, and a fourth the hempen; the importance of these plants as articles of food or manufacture no doubt suggested their adoption. Thus all vegetable substances are distributed in the language under eleven different heads.
ITS ZOÖLOGY AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE HORSE.
The zoölogical grouping in the Pun tsao is as rude and unscientific as that of plants. There are five pu, or divisions, namely: insect, scaly, shelly, feathered, and hairy animals. The first division contains four families: 1 and 2, insects born from eggs, as bees and silkworms, butterflies and spiders; 3, insects produced by metamorphosis, as glow-worms, mole-crickets, bugs; and 4, water insects, as toads, centipedes, etc. The second division has four families: 1, the dragons, including the manis, “the only fish that has legs;” 2, snakes; 3, fishes having scales; and 4, scaleless fishes, as the eel, cuttle-fish, prawn. The third division is classified under the two heads of tortoises or turtles and mollusks, including the starfish, echinus, hermit-crab, etc. The fourth division contains birds arranged under four families: 1, water-fowl, as herons, king-fishers, etc.; 2, heath-fowl, sparrows, and pheasants; 3, forest birds, as magpies, crows; and 4, wild birds, as eagles and hawks. Beasts form the fifth division, which likewise contains four families: 1, the nine domesticated animals and their products; 2, wild animals, as lions, deers, otters; 3, rodentia, as the squirrel, hedgehog, rat; and 4, monkeys and fairies. The number of species in these five divisions is three hundred and ninety-one, but there are only three hundred and twenty different objects described, as the roe, fat, hair, exuviæ, etc., of animals are separately noticed.
The sixteen zoölogical characters in the language are not quite so far astray from being types of classes as the eleven botanical ones. Nine of them are mammiferous, viz.: the tiger, dog, and leopard, which stand for the carnivora; the rat for rodentia; the ox, sheep, and deer for ruminants; and the horse and hog for pachydermatous. Birds are chiefly comprised under one radical niao, but there is a sub-family of short-tailed gallinaceous fowls, though much confusion exists in the division. Fishes form one group, and improperly include crabs, lizards, whales, and snakes, though most of the latter are placed along with insects, or else under the dragons. The tortoise, toad, and dragon are the types of three small collections, and insects are comprised in the sixteenth and last. These groups, although they contain many anomalies, as might be expected, are still sufficiently natural to teach those who write the language something of the world around them. Thus, when one sees that a new character contains the radical dog in composition, he will be sure that it is neither fowl, fish, nor bug, nor any animal of the pachydermatous, cervine, or ruminant tribes, although he may have never seen the animal nor heard its name. This peculiarity runs through the whole language, indeed, but in other groups, as for instance those under the radicals man, woman, and child, or heart, hand, leg, etc., the characters include mental and passionate emotions, as well as actions and names, so that the type is not sufficiently indicative to convey a definite idea of the words included under it; the names of natural objects being most easily arranged in this manner.
Between the account of plants and animals the Herbal has one chapter on garments and domestic utensils, for such things “are used in medicine and are made out of plants.” The remaining chapters, XXXIX.-LII., treat of animals, as noticed above. The properties of the objects spoken of are discussed in a very methodical manner, so that a student can immediately turn to a plant or mineral and ascertain its virtue. For instance, the information relative to the history and uses of the horse is contained in twenty-four sections. The first explains the character, ma, which was originally intended to represent the outline of the animal. The second describes the varieties of horses, the best kinds for medical use, and gives brief descriptions of them, for the guidance of the practitioner. “The pure white are the best for medicine. Those found in the south and east are small and weak. The age is known by the teeth. The eye reflects the full image of a man. If he eats rice his feet will become heavy; if rat’s dung, his belly will grow long; if his teeth be rubbed with dead silkworms, or black plums, he will not eat, nor if the skin of a rat or wolf be hung in his manger. He should not be allowed to eat from a hog’s trough, lest he contract disease; and if a monkey is kept in the stable he will not fall sick.”
The third section goes on to speak of the flesh, which is an article of food; that of a pure white stallion is the most wholesome. One author recommends “eating almonds, and taking a rush broth, if the person feel uncomfortable after a meal of horse-flesh. It should be roasted and eaten with ginger and pork; and to eat the flesh of a black horse, and not drink wine with it, will surely produce death.” The fourth describes the crown of the horse, the “fat of which is sweet, and good to make the hair grow and the face to shine.” The fifth and succeeding sections to the twenty-fourth treat of the sanative properties and mode of exhibiting the milk, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, placenta, teeth, bones, skin, mane, tail, brains, blood, perspiration, and excrements.
Some of the directions are dietetic, and others are prescriptive. “When eating horse-flesh do not eat the liver,” is one of the former, given because of the absence of a gall-bladder in the liver, which imports its poisonous qualities. “The heart of a white horse, or that of a hog, cow, or hen, when dried and rasped into spirit and so taken, cures forgetfulness; if the patient hears one thing he knows ten.” “Above the knees the horse has night-eyes (warts), which enable him to go in the night; they are useful in the toothache;” these sections partake both of the descriptive and prescriptive. Another medical one is: “If a man be restless and hysterical when he wishes to sleep, and it is requisite to put him to rest, let the ashes of a skull be mingled with water and given him, and let him have a skull for a pillow, and it will cure him.” The same preservative virtues appear to be ascribed to a horse’s hoof hung in a house as are supposed, by some who should know better, to belong to a horseshoe when nailed upon the door.[215] The whole of this extensive work is liberally sprinkled with such whimsies, but the practice of medicine among the Chinese is vastly better than their theories; for as Rémusat justly observes, “To see well and reason falsely are not wholly incompatible, and the naturalists of China, as well as the chemists and physicians of our ancient schools, have sometimes tried to reconcile them.”