This extract refers to periods long before the dethronement of the house of Chau by princes of Tsin; the position of this latter principality, contiguous to the desert, and holding the passes leading from the valley of the Tarim across the desert eastward to China, renders the supposition of the learned Jesuit highly probable. The possession of the old imperial capital would strengthen this idea in the minds of the traders resorting to China from the West; and when the same family did obtain paramount sway over the whole empire, and its head render himself celebrated by his conquests, and by building the Great Wall, the name Tsin was still more widely diffused, and regarded as the name of the country. The Malays and Arabians, whose vessels were early found between Aden and Canton, knew it as China, and probably introduced the name into Europe before 1500. The Hindus contracted it into _Ma-chin_, from _Maha-china_, _i.e._, ‘Great China;’ and the first of these was sometimes confounded with _Manji_, a term used for the tribes in Yunnan. Thus it appears that these and other nations of Asia have known the country or its people by no other terms than _Jin_, _Chin_, _Sin_, _Sinæ_, or _Tzinistæ_. The Persian name _Cathay_, and its Russian form of _Kitai_, is of modern origin; it is altered from _Ki-tah_, the race which ruled northern China in the tenth century, and is quite unknown to the people it designates. The Latin word _Seres_ is derived from the Chinese word _sz’_ (silk), and doubtless first came into use to denote the people during the Han dynasty. ~VARIOUS DESIGNATIONS.~