Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 1898: Illustrated by Color Photography — John Shaqi
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 1898: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 1898: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
I doubt if any islands have such a countless variety of animals and
flying and creeping things as the Philippines. A stubby variety of
horses, fat and furry ponies, is used in Manila and towns. Oxen
and a species of Buffaloes are used for heavy draft purposes. The
mountains teem with deer. Goats, Swine, Rabbits, and Sheep abound in
the mountains and forests in all degrees of wildness. The wild hogs
on Samar have sometimes killed natives. There are several hundred
varieties of birds, and about twenty that are not known elsewhere.
Parrots are more common in the backwoods than Robins are here. Among
the forests close to the coasts are found peculiar birds of the
Swallow tribe. They make a strange food that the Chinese are so fond
of--the bird's nest. Hundreds of natives earn their sole livelihood by
hunting at certain seasons for these birds' nests and selling them to
the Chinese. Of Monkeys there are a dozen varieties. Bats are simply
enormous. They are of the vampire variety. No wonder there is a vast
deal of superstition and dread among people in the tropics concerning
vampires. They are frightfully uncanny. I have seen vampire bats
with bodies as large as common house cats, and with wings that expand
five feet from tip to tip. Let any one be seated or strolling along
some moonlight night and have one of those black things come suddenly
swooping down past him, and he will have some cause for nervous
prostration. I knew one of those Bats to go sailing into the big hotel
dining room at Manila one evening when dinner was serving. It came as
a horrible apparition. Some women fainted and others shrieked as they
went under the tables. The men ran out of the room.
"The seacoast is rich in many forms of fish. The natives, like the
Hawaiians, know how to catch them, too. All the natives in the
Philippines that I ever knew about (except the rich and aristocratic
people in Manila) are fishers. They catch a species of mullet there
that is delicious. When these fish come up the coast from the China Sea
in schools, the natives will abandon any occupation and even leave a
sick hammock to go out and angle off the coast."
Ornithologists all over the world are much interested in the great
exhibition of birds about to be opened at St. Petersburg. It is to
be an international exhibition, in that it is the aim to exhibit the
birds native to every country of the world. The czar has placed himself
at its head, the Russian government will assist it with money and
influence, and the European and other governments which were invited
to take part in the project have replied favorably. The exhibition has
now assumed such gigantic proportions that it has been found necessary
to postpone it from the summer of this year to the summer of next year
to allow as many regions as possible on the earth to be represented.
BIRDS MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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