Banks of the Chu-Kiang. 8457 



By the Banks of the Chu-Kiang. By Arthur 

 Adams, Esq., F.L.S. 



It is the season of the green leaf and flower. Close at hand the 

 guava and the orange, their boughs bent down with grateful fruit, are 

 mingled with the dark-leaved banyan, the privet-like Ancistrobolus, 

 Psychotria elliptica with rich purple leaves, and Gardenia florida, 

 always a favourite with the Chinese on account of its fragrant flowers. 



Wasps and heavy-winged sawflies, green, black and yellow, haunt 

 these village trees ; and lurking among the foliage are spotted golden 

 beetles, Sagra, Clythra and Eumolpus. Poised in mid air, motionless 

 on vibrating wings, are clear-bodied Volucellae and bird-like Bombylii. 

 I spy the nest of a slender brown Sylvia artfully disposed among the 

 bristling thorns of a Palinurus bush, well defended, snug, bidding 

 defiance to snakes and weasels. 



I come out upon the river and I find the banks of the Chu-kiang 

 planted at regular intervals with dark li-chees, Chili bushes, broad- 

 leaved bananas and peach trees, and I observe the fields on the oppo- 

 site side yellow with heavy-eared rice. The broad river flows calmly 

 by. Here and there, stretched out across the stream, are countless 

 fishing stakes arranged in regular rows, with long black nets drying 

 in festoons on the ropes that stretch from pole to pole. Little sampans 

 are floating like so many waterfowl, drifting with the current, and 

 laying down their lines with a hundred baited hooks; dusky half- 

 clothed figures are seeking for river-mussels and cat-fish on the exposed 

 mud flats ; up the little creeks cluster hundreds of brown dome-roofed 

 craft ; while conspicuous over the low land are the square tanned sails 

 of the trading junks sailing in the distant windings of the river. 



I ascend a neighbouring hill, and from the summit become impressed 

 with the beauty, fertility and dense population of the "Central Flowery 

 Land." The brown sides of the Old World granite hill on which I 

 stand are pitted with the graves of the humbler classes and honey- 

 combed with the tombs of the wealthy. The graves and the moss- 

 grown tombs are overrun and partially concealed by the Rubus parvi- 

 florus, the wild rose and yellow Chrysanthemum, while vines cling in 

 graceful festoons about the scattered boulders. Among the showy 

 flowers of Melastoma sanguinea and Osbeckia chinensis, I discover 

 many beetles, including a glittering green Metallites, a small dingy 

 Bruchus, a bristly Strophosoma and a globose Philopedon. Stretched 

 below are green fertile plains, dotted with villages more numerous than 

 VOL. XXI. U 



