ought over
from Hong-Kong. All thoroughbred Philippine cats have a twist in
their tails, and are not nearly so fine as the European race.

Natives do not particularly relish mutton or goat's flesh, which
they say is heating to the blood. I have found stewed monkey very
good food, but the natives only eat it on very rare occasions,
solely as a cure for cutaneous diseases. No flesh, fish or poultry
has the same flavour here as in Europe; sometimes, indeed, the meat
of native oxen sold in Manila has a repulsive taste when the animal
has been quickly fattened for the market on a particular herb, which
it eats readily. Neither can it be procured so tender as in a cold
climate. If kept in an ice-chest it loses flavour; if hung up in
cool air it becomes flabby and decomposes. However, the cold-storage
established by the American authorities and private firms, since
1898, has greatly contributed to improve the supply of tender meat,
and meat shipments are regularly received from Australia and America.

The seas are teeming with fish, and there are swarms of sharks,
whose victims are numerous, whilst crocodiles are found in most of
the deep rivers and large swamps in uncultivated tracts. The _Taclobo_
sea-shell is sometimes found weighing up to about 180 lbs. Fresh-water
fish is almost flavourless and little appreciated.

In all the rice-paddy fields, small fish called _Dalag_ (_Ophiocephalus
vagus_), are caught by the natives, for food, with cane nets, or
rod and line, when the fields are flooded. Where this piscatorial
phenomenon exists in the dry season no one has been able satisfactorily
to explain.

The only beast of prey known in the Philippines is the wild cat,
and the only wild animal to be feared is the buffalo.

Both the jungles and the villages abound with insects and reptilia,
such as lizards, snakes, iguanas, frogs, and other batrachian species,
land-crabs, centipedes [159], tarantulas, scorpions, huge spiders,
hornets, common beetles, queen-beetles (_elator noctilucus_) and
others of the vaginopennous order, red ants (_formica smaragdina_),
etc. Ants are the most common nuisance, and food cannot be left on
the table a couple of hours without a hundred or so of them coming
to feed. For this reason sideboards and food-cupboards are made
with legs to stand in basins of water. There are many species of
ants, from the size of a pin's head to half an inch long. On the
forest-trees a bag of a thin whitish membrane,