The eighteenth and nineteenth century was the heyday of biological illustration in westem world.However,China did not have the tradition of scientific biology as early as the West,though it had a long history of herbalism.Biology was not introduced into this country until the late nineteenth century,around the end of Qing Dynasty,while the practice of biological illustration was even much later than that.In ancient China,a lot of illustrated books did exist,especially herbals,which also contained animal illustrations,since traditional Chinese medicine often used both plant and animal materials.However,it is hard to say whether these illustrations were scientifically accurate and correct,because they were drawn mainly according to experience,not scientific standard.As the founder of biological illustration in China,Chengru Feng (1896-1968),not only drew for botanists and zoologists,such as Xiansu Hu,Huanyong Chen,and Bing Zhi,but also trained the earliest Chinese biological illustrators,who greatly contributed to the progress of biology in China.He also published Biological Illustration,which was the first Chinese handbook in this field.