s willing
and able to pay for meat, and the native finds a new market for the
creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of
some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few
annas or "cash" or "ringits" higher than the prospective Chinese
purchaser would give, and the pheasants were mine.

In the catalogues of the brokers' sales of feathers we read of many
thousands of the wonderful ocellated wing feathers of the argus
pheasant, but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the
bedraggled bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some
Chinese hamlet where they will be sold for a pittance, the flesh eaten
to the last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to
play with. The newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an
important factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species
being exempt, for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not
squeamish as to the nature of his meat.

Before we leave the subject of Chinamen let us consider another recent
factor in the destruction of wild life which is at present widely
operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse, of which
six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the East.
To speak in detail only of the one at Hankow, six hundred miles up the
Yangtze, we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded
by a high wall, with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs, it
seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such secrecy
is necessary I could not learn, as there are no laws against its
business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short
time ago even the British consul-general of Hankow had not been allowed
to enter. He, however, at last refused to sign the papers for any more
outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on
within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the frozen
pheasants for interesting scientific material, but of course was not
allowed to do so.

Although here in the heart of China, outside changes are not felt so
strongly and the newly-acquired meat diet of the border and emigrant
Chinese is hardly apparent, these warehouses have opened up a new source
of revenue, which has met with instant response. Thousands and tens of
thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds are now
brought to these establishments