FABULOUS CREATURES. 227 



Avomen. Whenever one of these strays into his haunts, he 

 carries her off, makes her his wife, and proceeds to lay siege 

 to her affections in a way which argues knowledge. He 

 loads her with Jewell ry and fine clothes, which he gets some- 

 how or other by stealing, and in time the woman becomes so 

 fond of him that she would not leave him if she could! 



No less wonderful is the Jung, or gibbon, of Yangchow 

 in the province of Kiangsu. (The exact whereabouts of 

 several of these marvellous creatures is well known to 

 everybody in China except, of course those of the locality 

 named.) The Jung is an extremely large and agile ape, a 

 tyrant to his own species. He is described as having long 

 yellowish-red hair, and is said to be of a cannibal turn of 

 mind. Whenever he wants a meal the other monkeys 

 are made to sit round him in a circle so that he may by 

 means of pinching and poking find out which of them is the 

 fattest. On the head of the selected he lays a stone. The 

 rest are then free to scamper off, the victim only remaining 

 and following its captor, who doubtless looks at it as the 

 cook of the "Nancy Bell" looked at the sole survivor: 

 "Come here/' says he, with a proper pride, 



Which his smiling features tell, 

 " T will soothing be, if I let you see 

 How extremely nice you'll smell!" 



For the veracious natural history of the Celestial 

 encyclopaedia tells us that the monkey follows the Jung 

 until they reach the nearest stream, into which the monkey 

 plunges, washes himself carefully, pulls out all his hair, 

 and then lies down to be eaten! 



The Jih-kih is of the bovine family. There must also 

 "be a connexion between it and certain pigs in the more 

 poverty, stricken districts of Ireland, where the people are 

 so poor that they can afford to kill only half a pig at a time. 

 Similary with the Jih-kih, which belongs to the province of 

 Kansu, and should be extremely useful to any Russian 

 invaders who may come along, for this useful animal is able 

 to provide its owner with one or two catties of meat per 

 diem, which when cut away is completely replaced within 

 twenty-four hours. 



One more specimen completes my list of the four-footed 

 beasts of fable. That is the Mak, or tapir. Of the habitat 

 of this extraordinary animal my authority is silent. But 

 its peculiarity is worthy of note. Its chief food is iron. This 

 accounts for the hardness of its droppings which are used 

 by lapidaries for polishing the hardest kinds of jade. It is 

 possible that the origin of this fable is to be accounted for 

 by the fact that some igneous mineral in a more or less 



