68 w ii.i) i.ii-i; IN CHINA. 



hungi> as betorc. 1 luwc seen swallows hunting over the 

 same lawn and killing quite as often, probabK' oftener. One 

 evening in the countrj' I liappened upon a pairof kingfishers. 

 The tide was at its lowest, there was a shoal of young fry in 

 water not more than three inches deep, and I saw the female 

 bird dip twelve times in three minutes into the midst of them, 

 every time securing her prey. Then apparently she was 

 satisfied for she began tidying herself up a little. Now it 

 might be argued by one who believed in the absolute bene- 

 ficence of nature that once upon a time these birds all lived 

 on vegetable matter, and that only after the "'fall" they 

 became murderers of this terrible type. There is nothing 

 about them so conspicuously adapted to their present kind of 

 life but might, perhaps, be explained away. But what of 

 that tongue? What of the barbed end of it? There is evidence 

 of design, is there not? And the design is deadly. What 

 then are we to conclude? Was the Designer beneficent? If 

 so. destruction is compatible with beneficence, and when 

 Tennyson finds nature '"red in tooth and claw with ravin" as 

 she is, he must conclude that it is all for the best. But where 

 is nature or man to draw the line? Is destruction to reign 

 everywhere, or should it stop with man? Troublesome ques- 

 tions, these. 



They don't worry the woodpeckers apparently, who paii- 

 off, bore their nest-hole if they cannot find one, and bring up 

 their four or five young every year, their pure white eggs, 

 being bedded on soft rotten wood. There are many species 

 and varieties of woodpeckers in different parts of China, and a 

 specimen of the Fukien rufous kind will be found in the Shang- 

 hai Museum. He is about the size of the green species, but far 

 less handsome, being covered with dark brown plumage with 

 ruddy brown bars. .A.nother variety is the ^'iiiiijiipiciis Kale- 

 eiisis, a woodpecker about the side of a bulbul and marked 

 very much like Piciis Mandarimis. David describes a still 

 smaller variety under the name of Vivia Innojiiiiiafa, but he 

 does not say that it is found in this neighbourhood. It may 

 have been this that I once saw in the Chekiang province 

 when on a Christmas shooting trip. My companion and I 

 were walking back to the boat one day with our guns under 

 our arms. Ci'ossing a mulberry plantation our attention 

 was attracted to what we at first took to be a member of 

 the tit family. It was a tiny little thing, and at thirty yards 

 looked so like a tit that we should probably have passed it 

 without further notice. But as our path lay closer to the 

 tree, one of the low-cut mulberries, we saw that our little 

 friend was certainly not an ordinarj' tit. and closer inspec- 

 tion still, of which he appeared to take no notice, shewed 

 far more resemblance in bill and head to the woodpecker 



