142 
WANDERINGS IN CHINA. 
Chap. IX. 
number of tea and rice farms also belong to the priests, 
which they themselves cultivate. Besides the sums 
raised by the sale of these productions, a considerable 
revenue must be derived from the contributions of the 
devotees who resort to the temple for religious purposes, 
as well as from the sums collected by those of the order 
who are out on begging excursions at stated seasons of 
the year. The priests are of course of all grades, some 
of them being merely the servants of the others, both in 
the house and in the fields. They seem a harmless and 
simple race, but are dreadfully ignorant and supersti- 
tious. The typhoon of the previous year, or rather the 
rain which had accompanied it, had occasioned a large 
slip of earth on one of the hill-sides near the temple, 
and completely buried ten or twelve acres of excellent 
paddy-land. On our remarking this, the priests told us 
with great earnestness that every one said it was a bad 
omen for the temple ; but one of them with true Chinese 
politeness remarked that he had no doubt any evil influ- 
ence would now be counteracted, since the temple had 
been honoured with a visit from us. 
After inspecting the tea-farms and the mode of manu- 
facturing it, Mr. Thom, Mr. Morrison (a son of the late 
Dr. Morrison), and Mr. Sinclair returned to Ning-po, 
leaving me to prosecute my research in natural history in 
this part of the country. I was generally absent from the 
temple the whole day, returning at dark with the collec- 
tions of plants and birds which I had been lucky enough 
to meet with in my peregrinations. The friends of the 
priests came from all quarters of the adjacent country to 
see the foreigner ; and, as in the case of a wild animal, 
