Chapter 4 Chapter 3 Achievements in Taxonomy of Animals and Plants

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the words "animal" and "plant" first appeared in classification research. "Zhou Li · Diguan Situ" wrote in the article about the duties of Da Situ: "Using the method of the scholar association, distinguish the things of the five places. One said: the animals in the mountains and forests are suitable for hairy things, and the plants are suitable for soap [zao Make〕things...; the second is Chuanze, its animals are suitable for scales, and its plants are suitable for ointment...; Yan, its animals are suitable for mesophytes, its plants are suitable for pods (jiajia) things...; Wu is called Yuanxi, its animals are suitable for naked (luo naked) things, and its plants are suitable for clusters.” In ancient times, the government would send officials to investigate The property situation of each place is used to calculate the tribute and tax.At that time, people had divided common creatures into two categories, namely animals and plants, which showed that people already had the concepts of animal kingdom and plant kingdom.Then they divided animals into hairs (referring to animals with fine hairs such as mink, tiger, fox, etc.), scales (referring to fish animals with scales), feathers (referring to animals with feathers) according to their ecological characteristics. Birds and animals), media (referring to turtles and turtles with hard armor) and naked objects (referring to molluscs with naked bodies, some people think that naked objects refer to humans); plants are divided into soap objects ( Refers to plants with shells such as oak and millet), ointment (refers to plants such as lotus and gorgon), core (refers to fruit trees with drupes such as plums, plums, and peaches), pods (refers to pod-bearing beans family plants), bushes (referring to grasses or sedges) and other five categories.The two terms animal and plant were later used not only by China but also by Japan.

In "Zhou Li · Dong Guan Kao Gong Ji · Xin Ren", animals are further divided into two categories: "small insects" and "big beasts". "The genus of small insects" includes: "outer bone, inner bone, but [xixi] line, parallel line, continuous line, 纡 line, those who call with 脰 [dou bean], those who call with annotation, those who call with side, and those who call with Wing-callers, thigh-callers, and chest-callers." These animals are mainly insects, and they all belong to invertebrates.In ancient times, it was called "the genus of small insects". "Big beasts" include: fat ones (cattle and sheep), anointed ones (hogs), winners (humans), feathered ones (birds), and scaled ones (fish, snakes).Mainly vertebrates.