Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 335

1842.

Notices on Chinese Grammar

317

The vegetable productions are like those of the province of Che- kiáng and Kiángsú. The greater part of the green teas come from A’nhwui, or O'ʻnfai, as the people of Canton pronounce the name of the province. The most celebrated localities are in Hwuichau fü among the Sunglò range of hills, in the southeastern part of the pro- vince. The shrub is however cultivated in all parts of the three pro- vinces under the authority of the governor of the Two Kiáng, although some districts are better adapted for its growth, or the tea manufac tured there is more celebrated, than others.

ART. III. Notices on Chinese Grammar. Part I. Orthography and Etymology. Pp. 148, octavo. By Philosinensis. Batavia : Printed at the Mission press, 1842.

WHO is Philosinensis? And what is the mission press at Batavia ? With us no doubt exists regarding either of these questions.

And a copy of the book having been put into our hands, accompanied by a request that we recommend it, with a view to aid in securing for it an extensive and ready sale, and thereby in obtaining for its publish- er some remuneration for the time and money expended thereon; we therefore, as in duty bound, hasten to lay before our readers such information as we can collect regarding these Notices-confident that in no other way can we so well meet the publisher's wishes, and dis- charge the obligations we are under to the public generally and to Chinese scholars in particular.

This little volume of grammatical Notices is a book almost unique in its mode of printing. In 1831 and 1832, Mr. Medhurst, the indefatigable superintendent of the Batavia mission and its “mis. sion press," published two vocabularies, Japanese and Corean, which were printed entirely by lithography. The toil and expense of writing out so many words, and writing them too in a Roman text hand, induced Mr. Medhurst to try if he could not use common movable types and lithographic printing in conjunction; and this little book is the result. All the English portion of it was "set up" (as the printers phrase it) in movable types, with blanks left for the Chinese characters, and an impression was then taken and transferred to the lithographic stone, ou which the blanks for Chinese writing were

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