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Show 436 MR. R. SWINHOE ON CHINESE ZOOLOGY. [June 9, On the 9th of August I went out again to the neighbourhood of the Black-Dragon temple, and the following day started with some friends for the Meaofungshan, a temple built like a fortress on a hill 1500 feet high. The road lay across the valley and over the range (1300 feet) on which the Tacheo-sze temple stands, along a plateau and through an orchard-planted ravine. On the grassy parts of the hills Emberiza cioides, Brandt, occurred frequently, singing sweetly a Robin-like song; but about the orchards and plantations of oak there were few birds. The ear was everywhere deafened by the noisy Cicadas. In the ravine about the foot of the Meaofung hill the chief species was a brown Cicada about 11 inch long, known to Europeans in Peking as " Keenlung's Nightingale." Its cry may be syllabled " Meao-meao-meao-may ." It is said by the Chinese to have been introduced from Jehol into this neighbourhood by the Emperor Keenlung, who took great pleasure in its note. The noise it makes is perfectly bewildering, and one cannot but feel pity for the Emperor's unaccountable taste. From the small village at the foot of the hill it was a painfully fatiguing climb up the winding stone steps to the temple. This temple is considered especially sacred in the eyes of the Pekinese, and twice each year is visited by pilgrims, who make the journey, a distance of thirty-five miles from Peking, on foot, prostrating themselves at each step. There were several kinds of birds about the woods on this hill. Kestrels and Erythropus amurensis, Midd., were about in numbers; and in the pine-trees about the temple I watched with pleasure the movements of the little Sitta villosa, Verreaux, and the Crossbill. The early morning of the following day was cold, and a high wind was blowing. Choughs aud Kestrels were rising and falling in the air at one another against the wind. In the wood below, the Erythropus was feeding its fledged young on the branch of a tree. On the rocks below the temple two Squirrels were active, chasing one another and fighting. I secured one; it was brown, with a long brown bushy tail and whitish underparts; its ears were rounded, and not plumed; and its face was more sharp and Rat-like than in ordinary Tree-squirrels. It resembles in colour the Sciurus chinensis, J. E. Gray, from Ningpo; but the latter is a smaller animal, with rounder head, and more arboreal in habits. The Peking Museum had several specimens of the northern species ; and M . A. Milne-Edwards has lately figured it, in his ' Recherches des Mammiferes ' (in course of publication), as the Sciurus davidianus. W e returned by a long circuitous route, which took us eastward through a long gully to a cul-de-sac among the hills, to get out of which we had to ascend the Shipa-parh, or " eighteen flights" of stone steps. The descent took us to the banks of the Wenfio (river). Our course thence lay north-westwards through the valley to the Black-Dragon temple. It was a long, fatiguing walk of twenty-eight miles. On our way among the bushes on the hills we heard the Garrulax-like note of Pterorhinus davidi, mihi, and saw small parties of Rhopophi/us pekinensis (mihi) flitting along the tops of bushes singing sweetly. On the 13th of August we paid another visit to Tacheo-sze (the |