436 MR. R. SWINHOE ON CHINESE ZOOLOGY. [June 9, 
On the 9th of August I went out again to the neighbourhood of 
the Black-Dragon temple, and the following day started with some 
friends for the Meaofungshan, a temple built like a fortress on a hill 
1500 feet high. The road lay across the valley and over the range 
(1300 feet) on which the Tacheo-sze temple stands, along a plateau 
and through an orchard-planted ravine. On the grassy parts of the 
hills Emberiza cioides, Brandt, occurred frequently, singing sweetly a 
Robin-like song; but about the orchards and plantations of oak 
there were few birds. The ear was everywhere deafened by the noisy 
Cicadas. In the ravine about the foot of the Meaofung hill the 
chief species was a brown Cicada about 13 inch long, known to 
Europeans in Peking as ‘‘ Keenlung’s Nightingale.”’ Its cry may be 
syllabled ‘* Meao-meao-meao-may .’ It is said by the Chinese 
to have been introduced from Jehol into this neighbourhood by the 
Emperor Keenlung, who took great pleasure in its note. The noise 
it makes is perfectly bewildering, and one cannot but feel pity for 
the Emperor’s unaccountable taste. From the small village at the 
foot of the hill it was a painfully fatiguing climb up the winding 
stone steps to the temple. This temple is considered especially 
sacred in the eyes of the Pekinese, and twice each year is visited by 
pilgrims, who make the journey, a distance of thirty-five miles from 
ekities on foot, prostrating themselves at each step. There were 
several kinds of birds about the woods on this hill. Kestrels and 
Lrythropus amurensis, Midd., were about in numbers; and in the 
pine-trees about the temple I watched with pleasure the movements 
of the little Si¢¢a vidlosa, Verreaux, and the Crossbill. The early 
morning of the following day was cold, and a high wind was blowing. 
Choughs and Kestrels were rising and falling in the air at one another 
against the wind. In the wood below, the Hrythropus was feeding 
its fledged young on the branch of a tree. On the rocks below the 
temple two Squirrels were active, chasing one another and fighting. 
I secured one; it was brown, with a long brown bushy tail and 
whitish underparts; its ears were rounded, and not plumed; and 
its face was more sharp and Rat-like than in ordinary Tree-squirrels. 
It resembles in colour the Seiurus chinensis, J. KE. Gray, from Ningpo; 
but the latter is a smaller animal, with rounder head, and more ar- 
boreal in habits. The Peking Museum had several specimens of the 
northern species; and M. A. Milne-Edwards has lately figured it, in 
his ‘ Recherches des Mammiféres’ (in course of publication), as the 
Sciurus davidianus. We returned by a long circuitous route, which 
took us eastward through a long gully to a cul-de-sac among the 
hills, to get out of which we had to ascend the Shipa-parh, or 
“eighteen flights” of stone steps. The descent took us to the banks 
of the Wénho (river). Our course thence lay north-westwards 
through the valley to the Black-Dragon temple. It was a long, 
fatiguing walk of twenty-eight miles. On our way among the bushes 
on the hills we heard the Garrulaz-like note of Pterorhinus davidi, 
mihi, and saw small parties of Rhopophilus pekinensis (mihi) flitting 
along the tops of bushes singing sweetly. 
On the 13th of August we paid another visit to Tacheo-sze (the 

