Читать книгу Birds and all Nature, Vol. IV, No. 2, August 1898 - Various - Страница 5

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."