found that they called it, Ming-yuĕh, "the clear moon;" and, observing a grub nestling in a beautiful flower, he ascertained its name to be Wang keuen, "the royal hound." It is unnecessary to add, that he now became convinced of his mistake; but too late to repair the evil; as the couplet, thus amended by him, had already been inscribed on various vessels, and transmitted, as we find, to distant Egypt. It will easily be seen, that this by no means strengthens the supposition of an early connection between China and Egypt; and so far from the bottles being coeval with Psammeticus, B. C. 658, as has been suggested; its date cannot be older than A. D. 1130. Since the commencement of the Christian era, Chinese history makes mention of foreign merchants coming from India and Arabia, by sea, to trade with China. A. D. 850, two Arabian travellers came to Canton, who have published their itineraries; and, A. D. 1300, Ibn Batuta visited China: so that an almost constant intercourse has been kept up between China and Arabia, by which means the bottles in question may have been transmitted to the latter country, and from thence conveyed into Egypt. It does not appear that these bottles were discovered "in an Egyptian tomb, which had not been opened since the days of the Pharaohs;" for the travellers purchased them of a Fellah, who offered them for sale, at Coptos. Indeed, the circumstance of the inscriptions being in the running hand, which was not invented until the Sung dynasty, would lead us to conclude, that the bottles are of a late date; and were, in all probability, carried to the west by Ibn Batuta.
The most celebrated compositions, in the Chinese language, are the "five classics," and the "four books,"
