The Zoologist — October, 1870. 2317 



of a Pattee Shoonda for the ignoble purpose of fattening duclcs ! and 

 then imagine the same Chinaman "adding insult to injury" by 

 imitating a duck in the act of gobbling the priceless pupae. But the 

 subject is too painful, and I forbear. Mr. Adams himself, after 

 announcing the astounding fact, thinks it wise to tone down his 

 communication by retiring gracefully amongst the flowers of Anthyllis, 

 Veronica and Stellaria. Here is a portrait of the pupa-gatherer. 



" Turning my eye in one direction, I perceived an individual with 

 basket on arm, surveying the willows with inquiring eye. I was 

 curious to know on what he was intent, and observed his motions. 

 By means of a little sickle at the end of a long bamboo, he ever and 

 anon detached brown swinging cradles from the slender boughs, and 

 deposited them in his basket. I learned from himself that he was a 

 pupa-gatherer, and that those mummy-like objects of his solicitude 

 were the pupa-cases of a species of moth. When I humbly desired 

 to know the use to which these accumulated grubs were to be put, the 

 face of the old man relaxed into a smile, and he did his best to 

 assume the appearance of a duck gobbling up imaginary fat grubs 

 with impatient greediness and noise. From this pantomime I gathered 

 that he was collecting food for his ducks ; for this is one of the several 

 ways they have of fattening ducks in China. In the beginning of 

 summer, when the Principia utilis, which in winter time is nothing but 

 a tangled mass of green thorns, teems with milk-white flowers, and 

 swarms with bees ; when the edges of the narrow paths are gay with 

 the white and pink coronals of Anthyllis, about which wasps are flying, 

 vigilant and bustling; when in all waste places the blue flowers of 

 Veronica mingle with the milk-white stars of Stellaria, and in the far 

 distance a puce-coloured mass of peach blossoms contrasts with the 

 green willows; when those long-beaked hairy flies, the Bombylii, 

 hover over the hot narrow paths, like so many lilliputian humming 

 birds, and yellow-legged bees settle on the sun-bright spots, — then you 

 are startled in your walks by strange guttural noises which seem to 

 come from beneath your feet, but which in reality proceed from the 

 iris leaves that margin the river's brink. There, moored in some 

 secluded shallow spot, is seen a long-roofed boat, shaped like Noah's 

 Ark, with a sloping board leading into the reeds and sedges. A little 

 boy watches all day long his greedy charges, keeping them in order 

 by means of a slender wand, with a bit of rag at the end. At day- 

 break down swarm the ducks into the frog-peopled swamp, and at 



SECOND SEEIES — VOL. V. 3 B 



