the Editor of the "Norra-Cama Dairy News."
Srr,—I am glad to note that Mr. A. de C. Sowerby admits having employed the phrase "Sons of Hau' loosely" to designate the people of China who lived before the Han dynasty. It was wrong; the phrase cannot be used in the same 4s, for instance, "Sons of France' had he argued the point I woul howe felt constrained in the interes: of accuracy to enter the lists against him, which with the silly season close upon us, is perhaps best avoided.
I need, however, scarcely remind Mr. Sowerby that accuracy in matters historical is quite as exigitle as in matters reptilian; loose statements, tending to confuse and ualead, are at all times unscienti-As to who the Chinese were originally, opinions differ. Unless China was the cradle of the human race, it is obvious that her earliest inhabitants must have come from somewhere; and since at the present time the Chinese are a- conglomerate people, it is equally oh vious that they have come from more places than one; that they came at different epochs, and entered the country at different points. The~brachycephalous typo predominates, and this has been called the Stellar Cult people of Fgypt. who migrated from the Nile Valley ages and ages ago, which indicates then that China has been inhabited for a very long period of time anterior to the ancient wars of Chinese history, and reaching into a far more remote past than the few thousand years that Chinese records deal with. A few thousand years in the story of the evolution of man are as a little while.
Speaking of that mysterious Chinese book, the 1 Ching AK Terrien de JLacouperie says that it is a vocabulary of the Hak tribes, the oldest civilizers of China, who brought - the word symbols" to China as an_inheritance of the Elaine-Babylonian civilization. It was De Guignes who endeavoured to prove the common origin of the Chinese and Egyptians, basing his arguments chiefly on the. resemblances of certain Chinese characters with Egyptian hieroglyphics as analysed and interpreted by Horns Apollo. There seems to be a good deal to support.
Guignes' theory.
With reference to the Hakkas of Fukien, it is quite possible, and very probable, that having gone as far south as they could go, to the. borders of the Gulf of Tonking, many of them turned back and moved northward again till they settled down in Fukien; this would account for their claim of having come from Kuangtung. For further information regarding the Hakkas I would refer those interested to the learned articles by Dr. Eitel in "Notes and Queries on China and Japan," Vol. I, and the old "China Review'' Vol. LI, page 160. I am, ete.
Zavoc:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.