Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/130

 so close is the connection between the celestial empire and the powers of nature, that nothing can happen to the one without affecting the other. The science of astronomy, therefore, is studied mainly on account of the influence of the stars on human affairs; and hence the astronomical board is intimately connected with the government, and interference with that department is considered as treason against the state, and punished accordingly. The arrangement of the calendar is a matter of much moment with the Chinese, and lucky and unlucky days are regularly noted in that important document, by which all the business of the empire is regulated. We must not, however, rate the Chinese exceedingly low, on account of their partiality to astrology; when we remember that even in England, in the nineteenth century, there are numbers of persons who continue to place implicit confidence in Francis Moore, and his precious prognostications, which are sure to happen "the day before or the day after."

Of botany they have sufficient knowledge to enable them to collect and arrange a vast number of plants, whose appearance and properties they minutely enumerate, though they do not describe or classify them in a philosophical manner.

In the commencement of Chinese history, we find some allusion to the "Divine Husbandman," who cultivated the five kinds of grain, examined the various plants, and compounded medicines. Before that period the people lived on the fruits of trees, and the flesh of animals, knowing nothing about husbandry; until Shin-nung pointed out the varieties of the seasons, and the properties of the soil, making ploughs of hard wood, and teaching the pleoplepeople [sic] to plant grain: thus