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 by the natives from far and near.  The birds are frozen, and twice a year shipped on specially refrigerated P. and O. steamships to England and the continent of Europe where they seem to find a ready sale.  Pigs and chickens also figure in the shipments.  Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage to the crops.  In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain.  When their numbers are decimated as they are being at present, there must eventually result a serious upsetting of the balance of nature.  Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided, and that the present famine deaths of thirty thousand or more in some provinces will not be increased many fold.

When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from theirs of thirty years ago; that I would find steamers, railroads and automobiles where formerly were only canoes and jungle.  I indeed found this as reported, but while my task was different it was made no easier.  Formerly, to be sure, one had from the start to paddle slowly or push along the trails made by natives or game animals.  But then the wild life was encountered at once, while I found it always far from the end of the steamer’s route or the railroad’s terminal, and still to be reached only by the most primitive modes of travel.

I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction; the burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of rubber trees.  The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable, I cannot say.  I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity.  One leaves Port Swettenham on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour’s run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished.  From Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula, the same holds true.  And where some area appears not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless “lalang” grass covers every inch of ground.  One can hardly imagine a more complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region.  And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared zone, mile after mile to the north and south.