O -V o 



O t o 



THE AMERICAS MUSEUM JOURNAL 



seized the dog, which had been wired to 

 a tree, and pulled it away. It was evi- 

 dent that he was quite unconscious of 

 the trap, for his forefeet had actually 

 been placed upon one of the jaws only 

 two inches from tlio pan which would 

 have sprung it. 



One afternoon we responded to a call 

 from Bui-tao, a village seven miles be- 

 yond Lung-tao, where the blue tiger 

 had been seen that day. The natives 

 assured us that the animal continually 

 crossed a ridge thickly clothed with 

 pines and sword grass just above the 

 village, and even though it Avas late 

 when we arrived, Harry thought it wise 

 to set the trap that niglit. 



It was pitch dark Ijefore we reached 





' \, 





y' ' . '\ 



/i 



A Chinese ijriest of the Ling-suik monastery. 

 — These priests are often fugitives from justice 

 and are extremely unprepossessing individuals 



the ridge — carrying the trap, two lan- 

 terns, an electric flash lamp, and a 

 wretched little dog for bait. We had 

 been engaged for about fifteen minutes 

 making a pen for the dog and Caldwell 

 and I were on our knees over the trap 

 when suddenly a low rumbling growl 

 came from the grass not twenty feet 

 away. We jumped to our feet just as 

 it sounded again, this time ending in a 

 snarl. The tiger had arrived a few mo- 

 ments too early and we were in the 

 rather uncomfortable position of hav- 

 ing to return to the village by way of a 

 narrow trail through the jungle. With 

 our rifles ready and the electric lamp 

 cutting a brilliant path in the darkness 

 we walked slowly toward the edge of 

 the sword grass, hoping to see the flash 

 of the tiger's eyes, but the beast backed 

 ofi^ Ijeyond the range of the light into 

 an impenetrable tangle where we could 

 not follow. Apparently he was fright- 

 ened by the lantern for we did not hear 

 him again. 



After nearly a month of disappoint- 

 ments such as these, Mr. Heller ^ joined 

 us at Bui-tao with Mr. Kellogg. ^ Cald- 

 well tliought it advisable to shift camp 

 to the Ling-suik monastery about 

 twelve miles away, where he once had 

 spent a summer with his family and 

 had killed several tigers. This was 

 within the blue tiger's range and, 

 moreover, had the advantage of offering 

 a lietter general collecting ground than 

 Bui-tao ; thus with Heller to look after 

 the small mammals we could begin to 

 make our time count for something if 

 we did not get the tiger. 



Ling-suik is a beautiful temple, or 

 rather series of temples, built into a 

 hillside at the end of a long narrow 

 valley which swells out like a great 

 Ijowl l^etwefn bamboo-clothed moun- 

 tains, two thousand feet in height. On 



' Mr. Edmund Heller was a member of the 

 American Museum's Asiatic Zoological Expedition; 

 his efforts were directed particularly toward the 

 collection of small mammals. Mr. Claude Kellogg 

 was an instructor in the Anglo-Chinese College, 

 at Fuchow, China, who rendered great assistance 

 to the expedition. 



