only knowledge
of their content is through a small treatise published at the beginning of
the nineteenth century.

The third class, _Flowers and Birds_, deals with those paintings wherein
the Chinese gave rein to their fancy for painting the bird in conjunction
with the plant life associated with its home and habits. The bird is
treated with a full understanding of its life, and flowers are studied
with such a comprehension of their essential structure that a botanist
can readily detect the characteristics typical of a species, despite the
simplifications which an artist always imposes on the complexity of forms.

[Illustration: PLATE IV. PALACE OF KIU CHENG-KUNG BY LI CHAO-TAO
T'ang Period. Collection of V. Goloubew.]

This general class is subdivided. The epidendrum, the iris, the orchis
and the chrysanthemum became special studies each of which had its own
masters, both from the standpoint of painting itself, and of the
application of the aesthetic rules which govern this art. The bamboo and
the plum tree are also allied to this class. Under the influence of
philosophic and symbolic ideas they furnished a special category of
subjects to the imagination of the painter and form a division apart which
has its own laws and methods, regarding which the Chinese treatises on
Aesthetics inform us fully.

Finally, the fourth class, _Plants and Insects_, is based upon the same
conception as that of _Flowers and Birds_. The insect is represented with
the plant which is his habitat when in the stage of caterpillar and larva,
or flying above the flowers and plants upon which he subsists on reaching
the stage of butterfly and insect. Certain books add to this fourth class
a subdivision comprising fishes.

Lastly we must note that in the Far East, as in Europe, there is a special
class to be taken into consideration, _Religious paintings_. In China,
this refers almost exclusively to Buddhist paintings.

IV. INSPIRATION

The aesthetic conceptions of the Far East have been deeply influenced by a
special philosophy of nature. The Chinese consider the relation of the two
principles, male and female, the _yang_ and the _yin_, as the source of
the universe. Detached from the primordial unity, they give birth to the
forms of this world by ever varying degrees of combination. Heaven
corresponds to the male principle, earth to the female principle.
Everything upon the earth, beings, plants, animals or man is formed by th