8458 



By the Banks 



the eye can count, sheltered in groves of evergreen fig trees. The rich 

 alluvial plains are green with garden stuff, or golden with the ripe 

 waving padi, and are watered by canals and intersecting rivulets like 

 the water-meadows of England on a gigantic scale. 



On approaching the villages I see the hanging roots and dark foliage 

 of the Ficus nitida, and the hoary limbs of the great Bombax cepa, 

 entirely bare of foliage, but covered with magnificent scarlet blossoms. 

 The bamboos are really grand. Under clumps of this huge grass, 

 which here grows forty feet high, I find both shelter and beetles. A 

 pale yellow Chilocorus, a giant among lady-birds, is found adhering to 

 the under surface of the leaves ; a brown glistening lizard, a species 

 of Scincus, rustles among the dry leaves on the ground, and mole 

 crickets run timidly about or are seen scraping the earth with their 

 large fore paws. Everywhere I look I find a beetle. In the grass a 

 spinose Hispa ; clinging to the stems a red and black Mylabris ; on 

 the wing a bright little Anthicus ; on the ground a brown Serica and 

 a glittering Chrysomela ; under the oolam trees a dull green Euchlora ; 

 on the leaves in the sunny pea-fields Cetonia and Buprestis. My 

 greatest prizes, however, are a large red Horia and a Callistes, a perfect 

 little gem. Perhaps it may seem absurd thus to lavish praise upon 

 creatures not usually regarded with feelings of love or admiration, but 

 I confess I like them. "A beetle is a beauty in the eyes of its mother," 

 says the Arabic proverb, and I may add in the eyes of many an ento- 

 mologist also. 



Before I leave the banks of the Chu-kiang or Pearl River I must 

 beg the reader to visit with me the deserted quarries near the Second 

 Bar Pagoda, and accompany me in a quiet stroll over Danes Island. 

 The quarries form vast gloomy caves and overhanging water-dripping 

 rocks. The walls of old Canton and the river forts have been con- 

 structed from granite obtained here, but that must have been long ago. 

 The enormous moss-grown boulders and the heaped-up masses of old 

 lichen-stained granite everywhere surround you, and you seem to be 

 among the work of Titans. In the still dark pools are numbers of 

 harmless water-snakes, swimming gracefully about or diving beneath 

 the surface. The old caverns and ancient shady nooks are also a 

 favourite haunt of the goatsucker and the brown owl, startling the 

 intruder as they suddenly fly out from the deep silent chasms. I am 

 also impressed on this occasion with the harmony of colour between 

 two reptiles and the places they inhabit. One is a slender lizard, of 

 a brownish green colour, hardly distinguishable from the blades of 

 grass among which it lives, and the other is a Gecko, so freckled and 



