BEAST AND MAN IN CHINA.

IT has been said that Chinese art has sent us a million caricatures but not one. portrait ; while Edmond de Goncourt declared that Japan had only one indigenous animal; the monster. Paradox apart, though there can be no doubt that Japanese paintings of birds and- insects are inimitable of their kind, their presentment of quadrupeds, with the exception of monkeys, is so conventional that it conisys. scarcely any idea, to the West of what the ordinary wild and domestic animals of the island, other than birds, may be; while the paintings and porcelain of the Chinese Empire leave us abnost entirely in the dark as to what other

organic life, beyond that of people, birds, trees, and flowers, exists in the Celestial Realm. The chronicles of English sport 'by the rivers and swamps of the coast, and the researches of naturalists, who have gradually secured and exported specimens of the splendid varieties of pheasants of the Far East, have established the fact that nowhere in the world are there such magnificent examples of the pheasant family as in the:neighbourhood of Pekin and in North China, or such teeming millions of wild-fowl and waders as on the shores of the enormous rivers when the freezing of the mountain snows and waters at the sources has converted their shrunken channels into immense reservoirs of food. But the part' played by animal life in general in the oldest' civilisation in the world has not attracted more attention recently than it did in the days when Defoe wrote " The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe."

A very 'bright contribution to this aspect of Nature and domestication in the Far East appears in the pages of Mr. Oliver G. Ready's "Life and Sport in China " (Chapman and Hall, 10s. 6d. net). The book is the result of a twelve years' sojourn in the country, in which the author brings high spirits and abundant good sense to the description of Anglo-Chinese life, the nature of the country, and of the towns, servants and tradesmen, river life, Chinese dinner parties, marriage, ancestor worship, and a number of the points discussed in reference to the Far East. He is very conscious - of the difficulties which a civilisation that stopped and became stereotyped a thousand years ago 'encounters when it meets and has to face the criticisms of the progressive races who swarm along its coasts, and try to probe its centre, to- day. His sympathies are very largely on the side of the Chinese, though he admits that they are too aloof for us in date and feeling to be understood, and are "an untaking, un- likable people." But he insists on the many good traits in the national character. Among these may be noted their

kindness to animals, and their 'ancient and hereditary' skill in their use and management. A scene in Pekin'

gives some clue to • the humanity of the Celestial towards animals, though he will leave human beggars to freeze in the streets. But then the Chinaman's attitude towards life and death' is absolutely different from ours

"A noticeable trait of Chinese character, and one fostered, if not generated, by Buddhistic teaching, is an undemonstrative

fondness for animals, or, I might rather say, a passive admission of their right to considerate treatment. Strangely enough, animals, both wild and domesticated, appear to comprehend this senti- ment; for, while greatly scared 'at the approach of a European, they usually take but little heed of the presence of the Chinese.

It is a common thing to see a wellrdressed Chinaman sauntering along holding up a bent stick, to which a bird is attached by a.

string some four feet or so in length, so that the little prisoner can make short flights to the limits of its tether, and return again to its perch, gaily chirping and singing the while. Another stroller will be carrying a wicker bird-cage on the hand, bent back and raised to the shoulder, much as a waiter carries dishes. The cage contains a Tientsin lark or other celebrated songster. On'

arriving at the spot he will place the cage on the ground, and,

retiring to a short distance, whistle to the bird, which will shortly burst into song, to the evident delight of both owner and bystanders. Outside of one of the gateways is a. kind of bazaar, which we foreigners generally called ' Bird-Cage Walk,' for there the fanciers lived, and birds of many different kinds were exposed for sale, not in cages, but quite tame, and quietly sitting on perches, • parrots, larks, Java sparrows, &c., some of them tied by the but not all. Here, too, were to be seen wicker baskets, much resembling orange crates, full of common sparrows, representing a regular supply for a regular demand. Benevolent old China- men, jfaneurs and literati, would visit this bazaar in the afternoon with the sole object of buying these little birds, for a few cash

each, and then letting them fly away, a beatific smile betraying the salve to their' inward feelings generated by a knowledge of merit acquired, any miseries inflicted on the sparrows by capture and confinement counting for nothing in the balance against the good work accomplished by their purchase and release."

The characteristic beasts of burden and labour of the Tropics and of the North, the water buffalo of India and the snow camel of the Central Asian plateau, meet in the latitude of Pekin. How it came about that the:buffalo, which, though

now completely domesticated, is also found in a perfectly wild state in the jungles of the Indian Peninsula,- and' nowhere either west or north of that region, has been trans.:– ported westwards to Spain, Italy, and Hungary, and north- east to such cold latitudes, no recorded history shows. But in China, especially in the rice-fields, it is now. established, and is the object of the deep and abiding attachment of the cultivator and his family. Wherever the China- man emigrates he would like to take his buffalo also ; and though he has not carried it to Queensland, he is said to have established it on many parts of the Burmese Peninsula where Chinamen and buffaloes were formerly uncommon: It is in the central and southern provinces of China that the animal plays the most important part. It is by far the largest beast of burden in the world, with the exception of the elephant. Yet in China it is so docile that " it is possible to see one of these unwieldy dangerous-looking brutes being quietly led along, by means of a thin string attached to the nose, by a wee native girl, who, when tired of walk- ing, stops the animal, draws down its head by the string, puts her tiny foot on the massive horn, and is slowly raised from the ground by the buffalo and placed gently on his back, which is so broad that she can kneel and play about on it while her charge is grazing." These buffaloes usually die of old age, and on one occasion Mr. Ready met a large family of Chinese walking back to their village from a neighbouring meadow. He was told that they were returning from the funeral of their water buffalo, which had just died after a faithful service of twenty years. The grazing buffalo appears to act as a kind of creche and mail-cart at once for Chinese farmers' children, four small boys being seen at one time on the back of one of these gigantic beasts as it fed by the waters of a muddy dyke. Possibly somewhere in the, immense literary storehouse of China the advent of these Indian beasts may be recorded.

The Bactrian camel is entirely a beast of passage in China, and its migrations form one of the few examples of the appearance and disappearance of a numerous and important class of domestic animal with almost as much regularity as the arrival and departure of the swallows. The Bactrian camels come with the snow, when their magnificent dark- brown forms appear stalking silently in thousands to the gates of Pekin. Ten thousand are said to pass in and out of the gates of Pekin daily during the winter. Each party is led by the Mongol teamster, while possibly his whole family is carried in two immense panniers hung one on each side of the strongest camel. They are very strong, astonishingly hardy, and patient of everything but heat. In the spring their wool peels off in slabs, out of the material of which the Tientsin rugs are woven, and by summer they all disappear, "like the wild-fowl," over the mountains in the North.

The Mongol Princes have long had the sole right of breeding horses in the North, and send droves of tribute ponies yearly to the Emperor. But as the roads are bad, carriages almost non-existent,'and waterways abundant, good animals are not in demand, and pack and riding ponies take the places of draught-horses. The typical and aboriginal "Chinese pony" is of Mongolian stock, bred on the high plains, standing on an average thirteen hands, and, according to Mr. Ready, is not beautiful, though he may become useful. But though ponies are in no great esteem among the Chinese, they are highly appreciated among the Europeans, and at places like Shanghai thousands of them are kept, and many develop into useful, or even brilliant, little mounts, being fast gallopers, often good jumpers, and equal to great weights. Owing to their want of early training they have few manners, and show a decided preference for Chinamen, especially in the stable.

Of the native dogs as aids in sport Mr. Ready has no great opinion. Their powers of scent are poor, and they are " devoid of that friendly intelligence so noticeable in our own breeds." China does not bear out its reputation, due to Charles Lamb, as the original source of roast pig, by maintaining any fine breeds of the animal, popular as it is with the natives. Large black coarse breeds predominate. When some white foreign pigs were imported into Pekin they were considered so beautiful that it was doubted whether the spirits of some former friends might not have passed into frames so fair. No butcher would run the risk of killing them.. Though sheep are kept in China, they do not seem to be a feature of farming in any part of the plains. In Japan mutton used to be almost unobtainable, and we doubt if a sheep is figured on

any Chinese or Japanese porcelain or screen, though they are now kept near European settlements.

But it is in the management of poultry that the Chinese excel. Their ideas are quite ahead of the times, and might well be commended, if only as examples of 'ingenuity, to our poultry reformers. Thus in a village where the small chickens of different proprietors are liable to become "mixed," one hen annexing the brood of another, the property of various owners is distinguished, when in the downy state, by being dyed. Broods of blue, magenta, or green chicks disport themselves in the roadway or on the rubbish-heaps.

The duck-boats of the Yangtze and other great rivers have been described before. The owners take their flocks, numbering some thousands of birds, from place to place, making them swim their way in compact masses to the different natural feeding-grounds, a most economic plan, though the presence of thousands of wild ducks on similar mudbanks in Europe does not seem to have suggested their use for feeding tame ducks in the West. But Mr. Ready notes that all these ducks appear to be of one age, and was naturally puzzled as to how the owners managed to secure such a vast simultaneous batch. Going up one of the rivers, his craft passed through numbers of floating egg-shells, which, it was explained, had come from an incubator in which the ducks were hatched. The Chinese all agreed that incubators were used, and "had always existed," some asserting that the eggs were hatched in manure and lime, while others maintained that it was a duck-farmer's secret, but that the eggs were packed in cotton-wool in a big basket holding about a thousand, and hatched by means of a charcoal fire.

Mr. Ready's book, we may add, is only indirectly concerned with the animal life of China. The other matter occupies much more space, and is full of keen observation, and lightened by a very pleasant sense of humour.