Mr. R. Swinhoe on Formosan Ornithology. 207 



and rice, as well as bamboos, longans, bananas, and mangos. 

 Our large interior forests of camphor-trees give us one of the 

 most lucrative articles of commerce; and our hills abound in 

 another plant, the Aralia pajnjrifera, from which is extracted the 

 so-called rice-paper on which those highly coloured Chinese 

 drawings are executed, and of which the manufacture seemed 

 such a mystery until it was discovered that it merely consisted 

 of the careful paring of the pith of this plant. 



But after all this, my ornithological readers would doubtless 

 like to hear something of the proper subject of this paper. They 

 will scarcely care to have me fill up the pages of the ' Ibis ' with 

 the statistics, commercial and otherwise, of the island. Indeed, I 

 think I have already dipped rather too deeply into them. I will 

 therefore pass at once to the birds. In this, my favourite class, I 

 spared no pains or expense during my comparatively short stay in 

 Formosa, but endeavoured to make as large a collection and gain 

 as much information as possible. I employed a vast number of 

 native hunters and stuffers, and collected very large series of 

 every available species and their eggs. I am, therefore, enabled 

 to offer a very fine list of the avifauna of this hitherto unknown 

 island. I do not, of course, presume to say that Formosa has 

 been thoroughly explored; this would be impossible for one 

 man during so short a stay to accomplish ; but I cannot help 

 arrogating to myself the credit of having taken off the cream of 

 novelty in this branch of science. A great deal yet remains to 

 be learnt of the habits of particular species; and doubtless 

 numbers of fine things still blossom unseen for the discovery of 

 future investigators, and I trust not a few of them may fall 

 to my researches on my speedy return to that scene of my con- 

 sular labours. I cannot, however, help expressing my regret that 

 ornithology, as a science, is so little cultivated, and that I myself 

 have received much less encouragement than I naturally ex- 

 pected after all my earnest endeavours to bring to light the 

 natural productions of a country hitherto almost entirely un- 

 known to civilized men. 



Let me now take a glance at the following list, and make a 

 few remarks that have suggested themselves to me. First in 

 order come the Raptores diurni. These are all also Chinese, 



