146 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



as he is with his Cambridge-blue back, his blue-black breast 

 and white continuations, he also seems to form part and parcel 

 of his background. But once seen he is worth watching for 

 any length of time that his restlessness permits. He is about 

 the size of a robin, the British robin-redbreast, not the 

 American robin, which is bigger and is really a thrush, I 

 believe. If fortune favours, your trip may bring you face to 

 face with another charming little bird on its way back to the 

 south. I saw one on the passage north in the spring, but have 

 not been favoured with a similar vision since. He also is 

 very robin-like in shape, movement, and even in colour, for 

 his back is of the same brown, and his breast is red, but the 

 red does not cover the whole of his under parts as in the 

 redbreast, and the tint from the lower bill down over the 

 throat is a bright canary yellow merging into the red below. 

 This is the red-billed Liothrix. He would certainly be called 

 a robin if he were in England, though he is really related 

 to the bulbuls. Of these we have plenty. The common 

 bulbul (IxusSinensis) is not a migrant in this neighbourhood, 

 but stays \\ith us the whole year through, and ought to meet 

 with more appreciation than he does, for he has not a little 

 quiet charm both of feather and manner. But his chief 

 claim to consideration is the fact that when other birds have 

 ceased their songs, when the little pipe of the hawfinch has 

 ended, and the song of the blackbird is a reminiscence of 

 spring, the bulbul does his very best to fill the gap. In the 

 early morning he may be heard carrying on a conversation 

 with all the other bulbuls in the neighbourhood, for his voice 

 production is rather in the talking than in the singing line. 

 One lies in the bunk and listens. The outer door of the boat 

 is open, as are the skylights. Every note is clear and dis- 

 tinct, every syllable, I should have said, and imagination 

 at once begins to put words to the calls. Surely that 

 was a little chuckle at a sparkle of avian wit just expressed. 

 Every sentence is short and crisp, not more than five or six 

 syllables as a rule, and so the talk goes on for half an hour 

 or more. I have some reason to believe, though I have not 

 seen them, that certain of the green species of bulbuls are to 

 be met with amongst the hills round the Ta-htt. 



What a delight it is to spend a few days of our glorious 

 autumn weather in that classical neighbourhood, to drink in 

 the intoxicating air of the hills, to look out over the far-spread 

 lake, the wooded slopes, and all the endless beauties of a plain 

 "well watered everywhere, even as the Garden of the Lord." 

 Those glorious autumn tints, if the excursion be about the. 

 beginning of November, before the big blow has come down 

 from the north-west, are tints to be excelled nowhere in the 

 world except, perhaps, in the woods of Virginia, and not even 



