Tux object of the following pages is to offer a few remarks regarding the terms employed in the Anglo-Chinese Customs Tariff relating to articles derived from the vegetable kingdom, and to invite European residents in China to render assistance towards elucidating some dubious points in this connection which are entitled to peculiar interest. To the gentlemen of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service I would particularly apply. Mr. Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of that great and important branch of administration in China, has always shown the most liberal exertion in employing his influential position towards extending our knowledge with respect to this highly interesting but still so little known Empire. Thus I may venture to hope that his officers, inspired by similar views, will not be averse to interesting themselves in the investigations I am about to propose, and in which they certainly have better chances of success than other European residents in China. Their official position, their sphere of action in different parts of China, and their intercourse with Chinese merchants, all enable them to obtain much valuable information which is less accessible to other foreigners.
Since the year 1864, when at the of: instance of the Inspector-General the first attempt was made to give to the European residents in China and the Nearly ten years ago Dr. Fr. Porter Smith undertook the difficult task of writing a book on Chinese Materia Medica and Natural History, in which he tried to identify Chinese names of plants, animals and minerals with the scientific names. I am sorry to say, that as far as these identifications and determinations are considered, the book is very untrustworthy. It is a compilation borrowed indiscriminately from reliable and unreliable sources, with which the author mixes frequently his own generally unfounded and arbitrary viet In many instances we find him misnaming and confounding plants, or applying new Latin names, not found in any botanical For the convenience of reader in Europe, who may come across this paper, I may be allowed to give a list of The Chinese Ti—Newoheang, the most northern of the Treaty Pera, in South Sfancharia Galt of Lino-tang). 2—Tiensin, the port for Peking (Galt of Chil Shantang (Gulf of Chil 4—Shanghai, Province of Kiangea (aoar the mouth ape, Prove of Cian $—Werchew, Province of Chékinag, T—Foockow, of Fulkien.
8—Amoy, Province of Fuhkien,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.