206 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



It is also quite possible that gravid females of the Phoorsa (which is so common 

 in Ratnagiri) have occasionally been kept for a short time after capture in order that 

 the Government reward may be claimed on the young ones as soon as they are 

 born, but there seems to be little or no harm in such a practice." 



District Officers frequently refer to rumours regarding the existence of such 

 practices, and as the subject is of interest both to the naturalist and to the economist, 

 the sooner the truth is ascertained the better. 



BOOK NOTICE. 



The " Marchesa," an auxiliary screw steam yacht of 420 tons, Mr. C Kettlewell) 

 master and owner, * * * left Cowes on the 8th January (1881) and reached 

 Colombo April 24th, having touched at Socotra and Oolegaum Island (Maldives) 

 * * *. She proceeded via Singapore to Formosa ; and so far we have only quoted 

 the author. 



In a recent review we had to praise a writer for having written a readable account 

 of the ordinary outward voyage to the East ; but Dr. Guillemard has adopted a 

 counsel of perfection (given by Horace), ignored a few thousand preliminary 

 knots altogether, and introduced us to the "Marchesa," running in towards the 

 land to reconnoitre a fort at Nansha, the southern extremity of Formosa. This 

 particular fort has deserved from the first, as some of our own Isle-forts do 

 in their old age, the favour even of the Peace Society. For it was erected 

 not for the fracture of heads, but " as a refuge for Shipwrecked Mariners"; 

 in virtue of a treaty concluded in 1867, between General Le Gendre, U. S. Consul 

 at Amoy ; and Tok-e-tok, Paramount Chief of the Southern District of Formosa, to 

 both of whom the acknowledgments of mariners are due. For before that ; Tok- 

 e-tok's subjects had been in the habit of murdering all strangers on whom they 

 could lay hands, .and were more than suspected of eating them. 



The " Marchesa" made no experiments upon the improvement in their ways, but 

 passed on to the low island of Samasana, formerly visited by the famous old 

 Samarang ; and by the Sylvia (1867). Here, however, her party found nothing in 

 our line, but many domesticated Formosan deer (cervus pseudaxis) creatures looking 

 like a cross between the English red-deer and our "chital" It will strike a familiar 

 chord in the heart of every mofussilite reader to find that here, in what our author 

 calls " the ultimate of Ultima Thules," he was waylaid on his return to his boat, 

 and compelled to examine the school, just as he would have been here. Having 

 discharged this duty under the slight difficulty caused by his not knowing the 

 Chinese alphabet quite so well as the junior first form did, he sailed for Chock-e- 

 day. 



The virtue of the land of Chock-e-day, which is on the East Coast of Formosa, 

 is that its mountains rise 7,000 feet almost sheer out of the sea, as is well shown 



* The Cruise of the "Marchesa" to Kamschatha and New Guinea; with notices 

 of Formosa, Liu- Kin, and various islands of the Malay Archipelago. By H. H. 

 Guillemard, M.A., M.D., &c, &c London : John Murray, 1886. 



