372 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[PAKT IT. 



named by the Portuguese Formosa, or " The Beautiful." Till 

 quite recently it was a terra incognita to naturalists, and we 

 owe all our present knowledge of it to a single man, the late 

 Mr. Robert Swinhoe, who, in his official capacity as one of our 

 consuls in China, visited it several times between 1856 and 1866, 

 besides residing on it for more than a year. During this period 

 he devoted all his spare time and energy to the study of natural 

 history, more especially of the two important groups, birds and 

 mammals ; and by employing a large staff of native collectors 

 and hunters, he obtained a very complete knowledge of its 

 fauna. In this case, too, we have the great advantage of a very 

 thorough knowledge of the adjacent parts of the continent, in 

 great part due to Mr. Swinhoe's own exertions during the twenty 

 years of his service in that country. We possess, too, the 

 further advantage of having the whole of the available materials 

 in these two classes collected together by Mr. Swinhoe himself 

 after full examination and comparison of specimens ; so that 

 there is probably no part of the world (if we except Europe, 

 North America, and British India) of whose warm-blooded 

 vertebrates Ave possess fuller or more accurate knowledge than 

 we do of those of the coast districts of China and its islands.^ 



Physical features of Formosa. — The island of Formosa is 

 nearly half the size of Ireland, being 220 miles long, and from 

 twenty to eighty miles wide. It is traversed down its centre by 

 a fine mountain range, which reaches an altitude of about 8,000 

 feet in the south and 12,000 feet in the northern half of the 

 island, and whose higher slopes and valleys are everywhere 

 clothed with magnificent forests. It is crossed by the line of the 

 Tropic of Cancer a little south of its centre ; and this position, 

 combined with its lofty mountains, gives it an unusual variety 

 of tropical and temperate climates. These circumstances are 

 all highly favourable to the preservation and development of 

 animal life, and from what we already know of its productions, 



1 Mr. Swinhoe died in October, 1877, at the early age of forty-two. His 

 writings on natural history are chiefly scattered through the volumes of the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society and The Ihis ; the whole being sum- 

 marised in his Catalogue of the Mammals of South China and Formosa 

 (P. Z. S., 1870, p. 615), and his Catalogue of the Birds of CJiina and its 

 Islands (P. Z. S., 1871, p. 337). 



