"The Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly covered with water, which, in works of undisputed authenticity, they describe as flowing abundantly, then subsiding and separating the higher from the lower ages of mankind; that this division of time, from which their poetical history begins, just preceded the appearance of Fo-hi on the mountains of Chin." ("Discourse on the Chinese; Asiatic Researches," vol. ii., p. 376.) The following history of this destruction of their ancestors vividly recalls to us the convulsion depicted in the Chaldean and American legends: "The pillars of heaven were broken; the earth shook to its very foundations; the heavens sunk lower toward the north; the sun, the moon, and the stars changed their motions; the earth fell to pieces, and the waters enclosed within its bosom burst forth with violence and overflowed it. Man having rebelled against Heaven, the system of the universe was totally disordered. The sun was eclipsed, the planets altered their course, and the grand harmony of nature was disturbed." A learned Frenchman, M. Terrien de la Couperie, member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, has just published a work (1880) in which he demonstrates the astonishing fact that the Chinese language is clearly related to the Chaldean, and that both the Chinese characters and the cuneiform alphabet are degenerate descendants of an original hieroglyphical alphabet. The same signs exist for many words, while numerous words are very much alike. M. de la Couperie gives a table of some of these similarities, from which I quote as follows: +------------+----------+----------+ | English. | Chinese. | Chaldee. | +------------+----------+----------+ | To shine | Mut | Mul. | +------------+----------+----------+ | To die | Mut | Mit. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Book | King | Kin. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Cloth | Sik | Sik. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Right hand | Dzek | Zag. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Hero | Tan | Dun. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Earth | Kien-kai | Kiengi. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Cow | Lub | Lu, lup. | +------------+----------+----------+ | Brick | Ku | Ku. | +------------+----------+----------+