hinery
being only now in use on a large scale. Internal distribution
was carried on from numerous centres and at fairs, shops, markets,
etc. With few exceptions, the great trade-routes by land and sea have
remained the same during the last two thousand years. Foreign trade was
with Western Asia, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Arabia, etc., and from the
seventeenth century A.D. more generally with European countries. The
usual primitive means of conveyance, such as human beings, animals,
carts, boats, etc., were partly displaced by steam-vessels from
1861 onward.

Exchange was effected by barter, cowries of different values being the
prototype of coins, which were cast in greater or less quantity under
each reign. But until within recent years there was only one coin,
the copper cash, in use, bullion and paper notes being the other
media of exchange. Silver Mexican dollars and subsidiary coins came
into use with the advent of foreign commerce. Weights and measures
(which generally decreased from north to south), officially arranged
partly on the decimal system, were discarded by the people in ordinary
commercial transactions for the more convenient duodecimal subdivision.

Arts

Hunting, fishing, cooking, weaving, dyeing, carpentry, metallurgy,
glass-, brick-, and paper-making, printing, and book-binding were
in a more or less primitive stage, the mechanical arts showing much
servile imitation and simplicity in design; but pottery, carving,
and lacquer-work were in an exceptionally high state of development,
the articles produced being surpassed in quality and beauty by no
others in the world.

Agriculture and Rearing of Livestock

From the earliest times the greater portion of the available land was
under cultivation. Except when the country has been devastated by war,
the Chinese have devoted close attention to the cultivation of the
soil continuously for forty centuries. Even the hills are terraced for
extra growing-room. But poverty and governmental inaction caused much
to lie idle. There were two annual crops in the north, and five in two
years in the south. Perhaps two-thirds of the population cultivated the
soil. The methods, however, remained primitive; but the great fertility
of the soil and the great industry of the farmer, with generous but
careful use of fertilizers, enabled the vast territory to support an
enormous population. Rice, wheat, barley, buckwheat, maize, kaoliang,
several millets, and oats wer