4i8 



NATURE 



{March 6, 1879 



"The coxswain of the pilot's boat, the ex-member of 

 the nobility, wore, as I have said, a pea-jacket ; a photo- 

 graph was taken of the boat's crew. I could not per- 

 suade the coxswain to take off the pea-jacket, in order to 

 make the group uniform [the others were quite naked, 

 except a cloth round the waist] ; he would only promise 

 tiiat if he were photographed with the jacket on in the 

 group, he would allow himself to be taken with it off, 

 separately afterwards. The jacket was a thick garment 

 of the usual pilot cloth, fit only for an English winter, 

 but the man evidently regarded it as a mark of distinc- 

 tion and decoration, and a proof that he was coxswain. 

 I had much difficulty in getting a lock of hair from one 

 of the boat' s crew, and only succeeded by the help of a 

 missionary, who explained that I did not want it for pur- 

 poses of witchcraft. The man was also evidently loth to 

 part with a single lock of what was his chief pride. I 

 often, in collecting hairs of various races, subsequently, for 

 scientific purposes, had amusing difficulties to contend 

 with, and I suspect that some of the girls, from whom I 

 got specimens, thought I was desperately in love with 

 them." 



Here is a suggestive association of man and the pig 

 ^. 517) — 



" Rats live in the mountains [of Tahiti], and climb up 

 and devour the ripe bananas, and the grores of the trees 

 are traversed in all directions by the tracks of wild pigs, 

 which likewise feed on the fruit. It is strange that the 

 pig should run wild and thrive, under such widely dif- 

 ferent conditions as it does, and should be able to exist 

 equally well on wild plantains in the warm Tahiti, and 

 on penguins and petrels in the chilly Crozets. In __this 

 power of adaptation it approaches man," 



In his account of his short visit to Hong Kong and 

 Canton, Mr. Moseley has much to say about the habits of 

 the Chinese and their literature, medicines, and amuse- 

 ments. He reproduces several curious woodcuts from a 

 Chinese work on natural history, the " Shan Hoi King." 

 One of these (Fig. i) represents, according to the de- 

 scription in the margin, " The Bird and the Rat which 

 live together in the same hole. They come from the 

 mountain of the tailed rats and birds in Wai Une, where 

 they may still be seen." "No doubt," Mr. Moseley re- 

 marks (p. 431), "the rat is the ground squirrel {Spermo- 

 philus fnongoUais), and the bird must be an owl, which 

 is associated with it, just as is the small ground owl 

 {Speotyto cunicularid) of America with the prairie dog 

 and also with the ground squirrel of California, in the 

 holes of which, as familiarly known, it lives. The genus 

 Speotyto is, however, peculiar, as far as is known, to 

 America and the West Indies ; and the fact that an owl 

 lives in the holes of the Asiatic ground squirrel is not 

 known to naturalists. Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe^ however, 

 tells me that a small owl, Carineplumipes, exists in 

 northern China, which lives in holes in the ground. Pos- 

 sibly this bird has developed the same curious habit of 

 association with a rodent, as has the American ground 

 owl. If so, the fact is very remarkable." 



Our second woodcut, borrowed from Mr. Moseley 

 (Fig. 2), represents a fish {Periophthahmts) of very 

 strange habits, which, like the land-crabs, though allied 

 to aquatic animals, and irresistibly suggesting to the 

 observer the notion that it is most at home under the 

 water, yet would actually be drowned in all probability 

 were it kept under water for long. Mr. Moseley has 

 chased these queer fish in Ceylon and the Fiji Islands 

 (p. 296). " They are very nimble on land, and difficult 

 to catch. They use their very muscular pectoral fins to 

 spring with, and, when resting on shore, the fore part of 

 their body is raised and supported on these. There 

 seems to be no figure of this very remarkable fish, which 

 shows it at all in the attitude which it assumes when 

 alive. The accompanying woodcut has been drawn from 

 a specimen kindly lent to me by Dr. Giinther, and I have 



put the fish as nearly in the natural position which it | 

 assumes when on land, as I can from memory." Space \ 

 does not allow us to reproduce the excellent account of | 

 the Pearly Nautilus which follows here in the chapter on 

 Fiji. 



A good figure of Mr. Moseley' s^r^//^^, Peripatus, is 

 given on p. 159, and is transferred to these pages (Fig. 3). 

 A clear and intelligible account of the points of interest 

 in the anatomy and habits of this caterpillar-like creature 

 is given in the chapter on the Cape, and we read how 

 both the author and von Suhm (one of the three other 

 naturalists of the expedition, the other two being Sir 

 WyviUe Thomson and Mr. Murray) hunted high and low 

 for specimens near Cape Town. Von Suhm " was un- 

 successful ; but I was lucky enough to find a fine specimen 

 first under an old cart-wheel at Wynberg. Immediately 

 that I opened this one I saw its tracheae, and the fully- 

 formed young within it. Had my colleague lighted on 

 the specimen he would no doubt have made the discovery 

 instead." It was, however, we take leave to assert, in 

 spite of Mr. Moseley's modesty, no chance which brought 

 the Peripatus to his hands, but, simply enough, the un- 

 wearying energy and ingenuity which characterised his 

 proceedings throughout the voyage. At the Island of 

 St. Thomas (p. 15) the party "heard of" Peripatus, but 

 did not procure any. In New Zealand (p. 279) we again 

 find mention of Peripatus ; this time brought to Mr. 

 Moseley's hands by a local naturalist, Mr. Locke Travers, 

 F.L.S. Another result of Mr. Moseley's exertions at the 

 Cape was his discovery of two specimens of the skull of 

 the excessively rare and curious Ziphioid whale, Mesoplo- 

 don Layardii. 



Tattooing and the use of paint as an ornament in China 

 and Japan are amongst the subjects which Mr. Moseley 

 discusses at length (p. 489), bringing a variety of facts 

 together from his observations of Polynesians, as well 

 as other races. The painting of the face by Chinese and 

 Japanese is not similar to that practised by European 

 ladies. " An even layer of white is put on over the whole 

 face and neck, with the exception in Japan of two or 

 three angular points of natural brown skin, which are 

 left bare at the back of the neck as a contrast. After the 

 face is whitened, a dab of red is rubbed in on the cheeks, 

 below each eye. The lips are then coloured pink with 

 magenta, and in Japan this colour is put on so thickly 

 that it ceases to appear red, but takes on the iridescent 

 metallic green tint of the crystallised aniline colour. In 

 modern Japanese picture-books the lips of girls will 

 sometimes be seen thus represented green. I suppose 

 the idea is that such thick application of paint shows a 

 meritorious disregard of expense. It is curious that the 

 use of aniline colour should have so rapidly spread in 

 China and Japan. In China, at least, such was not to 

 be expected, but it seems to have supplanted the old 

 rouge, and it is sold spread on folding cards, with 

 Chinese characters on them, at Canton and in Japan." 



" This form of painting the face seems to be exactly of 

 the same nature as savage-painting, and possibly is a « 

 direct continuation of it. It is like the painting of our B 

 clowns in pantomimes. In China the faces of men (as 

 opposed to women) seem not to be painted at the present 

 time either on the stage or elsewhere ; but in Japan, 

 actors in certain plays are painted on the face with bright 

 streaks of red paint, put on usually on each side of the 

 eyes. The kind of painting is exactly that of savages 

 (Fig. 4). It is a curious fact that this form of painting, 

 surviving in adults on the stage, is still used elsewhere 

 for the decoration of young children. It is quite common 

 to see children on festive occasions, when elaborately 

 dressed by their parents, further adorned with one or two 

 transverse narrow streaks of bright red paint, leading 

 outwards from the outer corners of their eyes, or placed 

 near that position." 



" Such a form of painting possibly existed in ancient 



