then unknown to the Chinese. Chang-Kien, it will be observed, was no ordinary ambassador. He considerably enlarged the geographical knowledge and improved the economic condition of his countrymen. It is true that he was constrained to dwell ten years in the west, and that he belonged to an already civilized people, one of whose emperors had, 2700 B. C., consecrated with imposing ceremonies the cultivation of certain plants. The Mongolians were too barbarous, and came from too cold a country, to have been able to introduce many useful species into China; but when we consider the origin of the peach and the apricot, we shall see that these plants were brought into China from Western Asia, probably by isolated travelers, merchants or others, who passed north of the Himalayas. A few species spread in the same way into China from the west before the embassy of Chang-Kien. Regular communication between China and India only began in the time of Chang-Kien, and by the circuitous way of Bactriana; but gradual transmissions from place to place may have been effected through the Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. The writers of northern China may have been ignorant of them, and especially since the southern provinces were only united to the empire in the second century before Christ. Regular communications between China and Japan only took place about the year 57 of our era, when an ambassador was sent; and the Chinese had no real knowledge of their eastern neighbors until the Third Century, when the Chinese character was introduced into Japan.