Lying close packed on some spare tables in the Royal Asiatic Society's Museum, just as they have been taken from the travelling cases, there was last week displayed a collection ovt-rivalling anything the Museum already possesses of the same order. Yet it is but a small portion of what is to come, being the results of Mr. Arthur de ©. Sowerby's second trip into the province of Fukien in connexion with his biological survey of South China on behalf of the United States National Museum. It may be remembered that Mr. Sowerby visited Fukien last autumn and early winter, and came back full of enthusiasm on account of the extraordinarily rich fauna he had seen in his journey up the Min River and its tributary, the Shachiho. Last February he returned to Foochow, the main port of the province. with double the equipment that he carried on his first trip, and now, after nearly three months' absence he has returned to Shanghai with a collection of interesting birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and lower forms of animal life three times the size of the one he made before. And even so, he claims that he has not really begun to mak~ any impression upon the rich stores of biological material that await the investigator."
Somes or THE TREASURES.
Especially interesting are the birds, which form the greater part of this instalment. There re treasures amongst them which have to be seen to be believed and such ig the unknown wealth of China's wild life, hitherto doubted, that even the rarest specimens are, according to Mr. Sowerby, plentiful in this paradise. The gem of the collection is a Fukien barn owl, of which he believes there are only two in all the world's collections and both of them are in the British Museum. It is a much darker plumaged bird than the barn owl as we know it at Home and is quite a handsome bird, but it would probably be passed over by most people in favour of a violet whistling thrush. The colour sounds as unlikely as black or green in roses, but the plumage is, nevertheless, a beautiful deep violet all over, without a mark.
There are a couple of great sooty albatrosses caught on the coast, a hawk cuckoo, pigmy owlets, a gor-geons crested and superbly' coloured Sultan tit, bulbuls which, beautiful as are those which can be seen in the gardens on the fringe of the Settlement, put these latter completely in the shade with their vivid tints of green and blue, with yellow underbody. There are kingfishers the more beautiful because of their extra size, and blue and white and narcissus_ flycatchers which are a sort of miniature edition of the kingfishers, barbets of varied shades with green under-tails, dapper forktails, Oriental rollers and dozens of others.
Bats, large and smal:, fill other cases, one specimen being the rare leaf-nosed variety, and there are the skins of deer, civet cats, mongoose, snakes and even rats, the prize amongst the latter being an enormous brute 22 inches long and weighing 1} lb. Mr. Sowerby missed some varieties of lizards he hoped to find, but he has got many choice specimens, also snails, fish and other water things.
The curiosity of the collection is a pangolin, or scaly ant-eater, a weird animal closely related to the armadillo. Instead of the armoured sections of the latter, the pangolin's protective covering is of small plates so closely fitted as to make almost one sheet of horny mail, under which it curls up when something hungry and with a better fighting armament turns up to make inquiries.
Mr. Sowerby says of this splendid collection that it is "the land of Kipling's animals come to China," where most people think they cannot be found, and a glance at the above list will corroborate his description. He wanted a_ tiger badly, not only for the collection, but because he has yet to get one on his own account. He came across chances in plenty, but the villagers always spoilt the opportunity. Tigers, he found, were doing immense havoc, but whenever a cow or other domestic animal was killed, instead of leaving the carcase where it was and telling him so that he could wait for tke marauder to return for the feast, they would cut up the meat, sell it and then tell him—perhaps.
One find is worth special mention. It is not anything that has lived, but it is something even Mr. Sowerby has never heard of before and will arouse the greatest interest amongst the scientists of his class. It was brought in by one of the gentlemen who would go by the ignified name of shikari in India and something equally high-sounding in Western countries, but here in China are just "boys." He cannot give anything in natural history a six syllable name, but he knows the work and what to look for almost as well as his master.
rummaging about one day he pocketed a leaf and brought it in to his delighted employer. It has been cut inward from two directions as clean as with a pair of scissors, the section thus formed has been turned up and in, then sealed and so forms a perfectly symmetrical bell-tent of the approved Army pattern. A minute door has been cut, but unfortunately the resident was not at home and so, though it is obviously a caterpillar of some sort, it cannot be identified. There were two of these villas on one leaf.
Tap "Brive TicER.""
On his last trip Mr. Sowerby first went south of Foochow into the Futsing district, in the hopes of getting a shot at the famous "blue tiger" that was reported to be doing a lot of damage to life, human as well as bovine. He was accompanied by the H. R. Caldwell, the- original discoverer of the animal, but the trip, as far as any tiger shooting was concerned, turned out a. failure. The blue tiger had betoken himself to the shelter of some impossible country to hunt in, and though other tigers were in the immediate vicinity of their headquarters, Xilling cattle right under their noses, so to speak, fortune was against them and neither of the hunters got 2 glimpse of one of these savage animals. However, the trip was far from being a failure otherwise, for good collections of animals of various kinds were made by both parties, Mr. Caldwell collecting for the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and other American institutions. Assisted by vative hunters with dogs, they managed to get some very interesting forms of the smaller carnivores, with which the province abounds, while birds of beautiful plumage, and peculiar reptiles and fishes were also secured.
A Bar Cave, Returning to Foochow, Mr. Sowerby next ascended the Min Raver once more, reaching the town of Yenpingfu, whence, on the advice of Mr. Caldwell, he went into the mountains behind that city. He had intended later to continue up the main river towards the Kiangsi horder of the province, but a letter received at Yenping, and calling for his presence in Shanghai in May, made him decide to spend the rest of his time at the back of that city, where he had camped in some splendid country in which to make a good, representative collection of the local fauna. Heavy rains interfered very much with his work, at the same time causing him to suffer considerably from acute rheumaricin, but, in spite of these adverse conditions, he managed to cover a good deal of country and to make a fine collection, especially of birds and reptiles, amongst other things securing some specimens of a. very rare newt, numerous snakes, venomous and otherwise, as well as a large species of the giant tree frog, an animal that is extremely rare in museums. There is a "bat cave" in this district, which Mr. Sowerby visited several times, securing a magnificent series of bats, including 11 different species, ranging from creatures with a wing span of 18 inches and more down to miniature little animals that it was almost impossible to skin.
On his way back to Shanghai, Mr. Sowerby gave a lecture upon the natural history of China at Foochow, at which the subject of the formation of a zoological or
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.