NATURALISTS IN CHINA.*
THE borderland between China and Tibet remains an almost unknown land of mystery. It is a country equally interesting to the anthropologist, the botanist, the zoologist, and the student of an ancient civilization. Two books of mixed natural history and travel in Western China, both containing matter of interest, have appeared almost simultaneously. Mr. Ernest Henry Wilson has been travelling for the past eleven years in the province of Szechuan and the mountain country to the west of it. He is primarily a botanist, trained at Kew, and employed as a collector by Messrs. Veitch, and subsequently by the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard. The results of his labours and the numbers of new plants he discovered and introduced are well known alike to botanists and horticulturists. A Naturalist in Western China is a book of solid merit and permanent worth. The first volume is mainly narrative of travel, with descriptions of the places notes on the distribution of plants, and accounts of the wonderfully rich and comparatively little known flora. In the second volume, which is in some respects the more interesting, he summarizes in sixteen chapters the mass of information collected during four expeditions. He writes on timber trees and forests, which are being recklessly destroyed by the native population. Perhaps we have to thank the superstition of priests for saving that ancient gymnosperm and living fossil, Ginkgo biloba, which is to botanists the most interesting tree in the world. Pleasure gardens, agriculture, and particularly materia medics. are matters with which the Chinese have long con- cerned themselves. The God of Agriculture is the Emperor who ruled 2,700 years B.C., and who was also the father of medicine. It is a common belief in China that he had a glass covering to his stomach and could observe the effects of his new drugs. The tea plant, and many other wild and cultivated plants, come within Mr. Wilson's observant purview. "The Chinese flora is, beyond question, the richest temperate flora in the world." Mr. Wilson himself collected some sixty-five thousand specimens of five thousand different species, and sent home seeds of fifteen hundred different • (I) A Naturalist in Western China with Vaseulum, Camera, and Gun. By Ernest Henry Wilson, V.M.H. With an Introduction by Charles Sprague Sar- gent, LL.D. With 101 full-page Illustrationsand Map. 2 vols. London: Methuen and Co. [Ws. net.] -- (2) The Big Gains of Central and Western China: being an Account of a Journey from Shanghai to London Overland Across the Gobi Desert. By Harold Frank Wallace, F.B.G.S., F.Z.S. With 10 full-page and 11 half-page Illustrations from drawings by the author and 38 Photographs. London r Joun Murray. LISs. net.] plants. Many of these proved new. This amazing wealth of plants still exists in spite of the fact that every available scrap of land is cultivated. The excellently clear photographs of landscapes and of trees and shrubs are a feature of this book. But, without doubt, the most puzzling and striking character of the Chinese flora is its affinity with the Atlantic side of the North American Continent Next to sericulture, which we owe to China, one of the most peculiar industries of certain Chinese districts is the production of insect wax by the cultivation of a scale insect (Coccus pela) on trees. This wax was a great puzzle to early travellers. It has taken five centuries, as Mr. Wilson in his chapter on the matter points out, to establish the facts. The trees have lately been identified at Kew as species of ash and of privet.
We pass now to the fauna. On one expedition Mr. Wilson was accompanied by Mr. Zappey, a bird collector. The account which he gives of the pheasants and their distribution adds to our scanty knowledge of this characteristic Chinese group. Of small birds he has little to say. Western China, however, has a striking and noteworthy mammalian fauna. As to this we do not seek in vain for fresh information. He unfortunately failed to secure, or even see, the giant panda which Pere David discovered. Szechuan has, however, the takin, goral, serow, wapiti, and bears to interest zoologists. We stand on the last ranges of the Asiatic plateau. It is a country of vast highlands and separate mountain valleys. Geographical races are especially apparent, among the bears, for instance. Mr. Lydekker and others have tried to define these local races. But our present material is far too scanty. This is obvious after reading Mr. Wilson's attempts to summarize what is known about the so-called big-game animals. In the case of the takin, of which we shall have more to say when noticing Mr. Wallace's book, there is clearly a series of differently coloured geographical races extending eastward from Assam. Whether detached or geographically connected we know not.
The fascination of Western China to the traveller becomes more intense the more one knows of the country and the people. Mr. Wilson had no difficulties. He entered into the habits and feelings of the Chinese, and they liked him. No part of the narrative gives a stranger picture of China than the visit to Omei Shan, one of the five sacred mountains. Here Buddhist temples and wonderful plants were to be seen side by side, and pilgrims who had walked two thousand miles. Wa Shan, the sister mountain, has also an astonishing flora. Few foreigners have traversed some parts of the pro- vince into which Mr. Wilson penetrated. His book will repay careful reading, though the reader who is not a botanist may be alarmed by lists of Latin names. It is well illustrated from the great collection of photographs which he took.
Mr. Harold Frank Wallace's book, The Big Game of Central and Western China, is a work of modest dimensions and of less solid value than Mr. Wilson's. It is chiefly a narrative, exceedingly readable and often amusing, of a journey from Shanghai, through the provinces of Szeehuan, Shensi, and Karam, which ultimately ended at Omsk in Siberia. There are capital descriptions of Chinese travel, of inns, villages, and people. We shall return later to the big game. The small mammals that were collected are dealt with in an appendix by Mr. Oldfield Thomas. Mr. Wallace is a sports- man. Had he been more of an ornithologist he could have added to our knowledge of Chinese birds. He modestly calls himself "a field naturalist with a love of travel." The start was made in 1911, but the interesting part of the book begins when Ronan has been left behind, and a journey with carts, mules, and finally with sledges begins. For companions Mr. Wallace had a friend, Mr. George Fenwick-Owen, and Dr. J. A. 0. Smith, of Shanghai, who combined a knowledge of Chinese with the art of taxidermy—an invaluable equip- ment for such a journey. Mr. Wallace had a camera, and, better still, he can draw animals with rare delicacy and finish. The book is well illustrated with photographs of the country and excellent drawings of takin, wapiti, wild sheep, and other game.
The most interesting pages to the naturalist are perhaps those which describe the habits and hunting of the takin. This strange beast (Buclorcas taxicolor) is found in mountain regions from Assam to China. The first living specimen to reach Europe is still in our Zoological Gardens. German zoologists, Dr. Matschie among the number, think that it is allied to the musk-ox. English zoologists place it near the goats. Be this as it may, the takin remains an abnormal animal, of which there are clearly several local forms, races, or species. The form from the monntains of Shensi, which is yellow gold instead of being dark brown, has been described. under the name of B. bedfordi. An intermediate race comes from Tibet. The bulls stand over four feet high, with enormously powerful short legs. The stalking and killing of Mr. Wallace's first takin in the Tsinling Mountains formed one of the landmarks in the journey.
Choni, a small town on the China-Tibet border, with a large Mohammedan population, formed the centre for other hunting trips. The view of the Minshan Mountains from near this place is not easily forgotten. Guides, who are good hunters and terrific walkers, can be got with ease among these border tribes. The beasts of the chase include leopards, bears, a wild sheep, wapiti, musk-deer, roe-deer, serow, and goral. On most of these Mr. Wallace has something to say that is worth reading, though he was not always successful in getting specimens. The wild sheep of Kansa is another aberrant form, on the borderland between goats and sheep. It is closely allied to the there' or barbel of Tibetan and Himalayan heights. In the same district Mr. Wallace also came upon the white-maned serow. This is a beast of the thick fir woods, most difficult to get at even with the help of a pack of dogs. Resembling some dismal-looking goat, the Asiatic chamois is a lover of precipices and dark forests, but is, apparently, quite numerous in this locality. An expedition into Tibet proved a failure and ended in retreat. Kr. Wallace has a fairly full account, with some charming pencil drawings, of the roe-deer and the wapiti. Both these have been separated as distinct species. The slaughter of wapiti seems to be going on apace, chiefly for the antlers, from which hartahorn is prepared. A pair of wapiti horns in velvet will fetch ES or sixty taels. At Chord came news of the spreading revolution and the fall of the Manchus. The travellers met with little trouble, though the Ko-lao-hni, or League of the Elder Brother, was strong in the district. In a week they were at Lancbow, still, since Marco Polo's day, the centre of the greatest trade routes in Central Asia. The journey across the Gobi Desert seemed un- inviting; but it was done in mid-winter without really serious difficulties. We would gladly have had a more detailed account of it. The great road to Omsk on the railway was the only practicable means of leaving the Celestial Empire. Excepting Mongolian and Przewalski's gazelles, there was little to excite the sportsman. For the naturalist Western China will long remain a mysterious happy hunting ground. Romance still lives there. It will not, let us hope, for the present be overrun by the tourist. sportsman.
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