All this is well and interestingly described in Mrs. Harkness' book, 83 well as the return journey to Shanghai ty airplane; her stay in this city while waiting for a boat to America; how she was stopped by "the Customs authorities from embarking with the toby panda because she had no permit to take It out of the country; and how, the permit having at last been given, shw sailed on the Empress of Russia for Vancouver sand in due course: arrived safely in New York with the world's only" living giant panda captivity. 'The value to science of Mrs. Harkness' achievement is very eat, providing, as it does, the op-Portunity of studying this rare animal in a living condition.
If all this is not worth the publicity'
has been given, and "Ssu-lin," as the baby panda was called after Mrs. Jack Young, is not worthy of the position she holds in the Brook-field' Zoo in Chicago as its chief headline news.
The fact that Mrs. Harkness has since returned to China and secured a second live giant pands, which was duly displayed to the public in Shanghai and is now on its way to join "Ssu-lin" in Chicago, does not detract from the romance of the story of her first achievement in this. direction, og described in her book, which "is simply written, well got up, and' supplied with a number of attractive illustrations.—a. DE es. jow We Are Older" (Brookfield Zoo) was reported that its food consisted entirely of bamboo, thus presenting the anomaly of a member of the order Carnivora, or flesh-eaters, being a herbivore, of vegetable-eater in habits. This mysterious animal lives inthe dense bamboo and rhododendron thickets of some of the wildest and most inaccessible moun-Yalnous country in the world, rang Ing In altitude from 8,000 to 12,000 feet or more. While from time to time dead specimens were secured by Western explorers and collectors from native hunters, for forty years atter its Arst discovery no white man ever set eyes on a living giant panda its native haunts. The famous General Pereira, in his journeys through West China and Eastern Tibet, on the last of which he died, searched for this elusive animal in vain, it ig reported that he saw whol he thought was one in a tree in the distance, but that is the nearest he or any other explorer got to it, Nothing was known to the world at inge of the habits of the giant panda, beyond the alleged fact that it lived on, bamboo, right up to the. summer of 1928, when the of the giant bandi was Mr. W. H. Harkness, whose main object was to capture 'a live specimen for the! Bronx Zoo in New York. He met with difficulties in getting the nocessary permission from the Nationalist Government in Nanking for his enterprise, This delayed him for ten months. His untimely death in Shanghai, occurring shortly after he had" secured his" permit, brought his venture to a tragic end, Thus it was that his widow, Ruth Harkness, a professional dress desigmer in New York, inherited an expedition [in West Chirg after b live giant panda, as she says in her delightful book, "The Lady and the ands." She relates how thi, after the rst shock of the news of her husband's death had passed, she de-elded, much against the advice of li her friends, to come to China in order to put' through they project Which he had conceived. She admits! that she knew nothing about China, exploring, hunting or anything involved in the adventure upon which she had decided to embark. This! did not discourage her, however.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.