Agricultural books of the four major agricultural books

The listing of farm tools as an important part of comprehensive agricultural books began with Wang Zhen's agricultural books, which is also a major feature of the book. Traditional farm tools in China have developed to a mature stage in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, with complete types and diverse shapes. By the Song Dynasty, there had been more comprehensive books on farm tools, such as the three-volume Handbook of Farm Tools written by Zeng Zhijin, and then there were two volumes. Unfortunately, this book is dead. The number of agricultural instrument atlas in agricultural books in Wang Zhen is unprecedented. There are only more than 10 kinds of farm tools mentioned in Fan Sheng Zhi, more than 30 kinds of farm tools mentioned in Qi Yaomin's Book, but there are more than 100 kinds and 306 drawings in Farm Tools Atlas. When doing this part of the work, Wang Zhen spent the most energy, not only collecting and vividly describing the popular agricultural tools at that time, but also drawing the restoration map of agricultural tools that had been lost in ancient times after textual research.

The Map of Current Politics and Living Law and the Map of National Agricultural Situation are also the first works of Wang Zhennong's book. The original picture of the back picture has been lost, so it is impossible to know its original appearance. What I see in the book now is painted by later generations. The fortune chart refers to the living method, which is a concise summary of the calendar and fortune. The figure shows the direction, heavenly stems, earthly branches, four seasons, twelve months, twenty-four solar terms, seventy-two seasons and agricultural activities represented by each phenology from the inside out with a coaxial octupole turntable. Combine the stars, seasons, phenology and agricultural production procedures flexibly and compactly. This method of summarizing the main contents of farmers' monthly orders with a small picture is clear in thinking, economical and convenient to use, and it cannot be said that it is an admirable and wonderful idea.

In the appendix of Wang Zhennong's Book, "making movable type and printing calligraphy" refers to more than 30,000 kinds of wooden movable type that Wang Zhen asked craftsmen to carve, and the rotary typesetting disk he invented himself, which can reduce the fatigue of typesetters and improve efficiency.