Mr. R. Swinhoe on Formosan Ornithology. 207 
and rice, as well as bamboos, longans, bananas, and mangos. 
Our large interior forests of camphor-trees give us one of the 
most lucrative articles of commerce; and our hills abound in 
another plant, the Aralia papyrifera , from which is extracted the 
so-called rice-paper on which those highly coloured Chinese 
drawings are executed, and of which the manufacture seemed 
such a mystery until it was discovered that it merely consisted 
of the careful paring of the pith of this plant. 
But after all this, my ornithological readers would doubtless 
like to hear something of the proper subject of this paper. They 
will scarcely care to have me fill up the pages of the f Ibis 9 with 
the statistics, commercial and otherwise, of the island. Indeed, I 
think I have already dipped rather too deeply into them. I will 
therefore pass at once to the birds. In this, my favourite class, I 
spared no pains or expense during my comparatively short stay in 
Formosa, but endeavoured to make as large a collection and gain 
as much information as possible. I employed a vast number of 
native hunters and stuffers, and collected very large series of 
every available species and their eggs. I am, therefore, enabled 
to offer a very fine list of the avifauna of this hitherto unknown 
island. I do not, of course, presume to say that Formosa has 
been thoroughly explored; this would be impossible for one 
man during so short a stay to accomplish; but I cannot help 
arrogating to myself the credit of having taken off the cream of 
novelty in this branch of science. A great deal yet remains to 
be learnt of the habits of particular species; and doubtless 
numbers of fine things still blossom unseen for the discovery of 
future investigators, and I trust not a few of them may fall 
to my researches on my speedy return to that scene of my con¬ 
sular labours. I cannot, however, help expressing my regret that 
ornithology, as a science, is so little cultivated, and that I myself 
have received much less encouragement than I naturally ex¬ 
pected after all my earnest endeavours to bring to light the 
natural productions of a country hitherto almost entirely un¬ 
known to civilized men. 
Let me now take a glance at the following list, and make a 
few remarks that have suggested themselves to me. First in 
order come the Raptores diurni. These are all also Chinese, 
