or arranged less
pretentiously on the door-step of a temple. If innocent of all claims
to a knowledge of the written language, he may take them for cheap
editions of Confucius, with which literary chair-coolies are wont to
solace their leisure hours; at the worst, some of these myriad novels
of which he has heard so much, and read--in translations--so little.
It possibly never enters our barbarian's head that many of these
itinerant book-sellers are vendors of educational works, much after
the style of Pinnock's Catechisms and other such guides to knowledge.
Buying a handful the other day for a few cash,[*] we were much amused
at the nature of the subjects therein discussed, and the manner in
which they were treated. The first we opened was on Ethnology and
Zoology, and gave an account of the wonderful types of men and beasts
which exist in far-off regions beyond the pale of China and
civilisation. There was the long-legged nation, the people of which
have legs three _chang_ (thirty feet) long to support bodies of no
more than ordinary size, followed by a short account of a cross-legged
race, a term which explains itself. We are next told of a country
where all the inhabitants have a large round hole right through the
middle of their bodies, the officials and wealthy citizens being
easily and comfortably carried _a la_ sedan chair by means of a strong
bamboo pole passed through it. Then there is the feathered or bird
nation, the pictures of which people remind us very much of Lapps and
Greenlanders. A few lines are devoted to a pygmy race of nine-inch
men, also to a people who walk with their bodies at an angle of 45
degrees. There is the one-armed nation, and a three-headed nation,
besides fish-bodied and bird-headed representatives of humanity; last
but not least we have a race of beings without heads at all, their
mouth, eyes, nose, &c., occupying their chests and pit of the stomach!

"And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

The little work which contains the above valuable information was
published in 1783, and has consequently been nearly one hundred years
before an enlightened and approving public.

[*] About 24 cash go to a penny.

Not to dwell upon the remaining portion, devoted to Zoology, and
containing wonderful specimens of various kinds of animals and birds
met with by travellers beyond the Four Seas, we would remark