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 unwholesome condition will by no means readily be found.  From time to time a few scientific treatises are translated by ambitious members of the missionary body, but such only tend to swell the pastor’s fame amongst his own immediate flock:  they do not advance civilisation one single step.  The very fact of their emanating from a missionary would of itself be enough to deter the better class of Chinese from purchasing, or even accepting them as a gift.[*]

    [*] “The principal priest . . . declined the gift of some Christian
    books.”—­From Glimpses of Travel in the Middle Kingdom,
    published in the Celestial Empire of July 3d, 1875.

DENTISTRY

Roaming in quest of novelty through that mine of marvels, a Chinese city, we were a witness the other day of a strange but not uncommon scene.  We had halted in front of the stall of a street apothecary, surgeon, and general practitioner, and were turning over with our eyes his stock of simples, dragons’ teeth, tigers’-claws, and like drugs used as ingredients in the native pharmacopoeia, when along came a man, holding his hand up to his jaw, and apparently in great pain.  He sat down by the doctor and explained to him that he was suffering with the toothache, to get rid of which he would like to have his tooth removed.  The doctor opened his patient’s mouth and inspected the aching tooth; then he took a small phial from his stock of medicines, and into the palm of his hand he shook a few scruples of a pink-coloured powder.  He next licked his finger and dipped it into the powder, and inserting this into the man’s mouth, rubbed it on the aching tooth and gum.  He repeated this three or four times, and then concluded by turning the patient’s head upside down; when, to the no small astonishment of many of the bystanders, among whom was apparently the man himself, the tooth dropped out and fell upon the ground.  The doctor then asked him if he had felt any pain, to which he replied that he had not, and the payment of a small fee brought the seance to a close.  At our application the tooth was picked up and very civilly exhibited