After nearly a month of disappointments such as these Mr. Heller joined us at Bui-tao with Mr. Kellogg.  Caldwell thought it advisable to shift camp to the Ling-suik monastery, about twelve miles away, where he had once spent a summer with his family and had killed several tigers.  This was within the blue tiger’s range and, moreover, had the advantage of offering a better general collecting ground than Bui-tao; thus with Heller to look after the small mammals we could begin to make our time count for something if we did not get the tiger.

Ling-suik is a beautiful temple, or rather series of temples, built into a hillside at the end of a long narrow valley which swells out like a great bowl between bamboo clothed mountains, two thousand feet in height.  On his former visit Mr. Caldwell had made friends with the head priest and we were allowed to establish ourselves upon the broad porch of the third and highest building.  It was an ideal place for a collecting camp and would have been delightful except for the terrible heat which was rendered doubly disagreeable by the almost continual rain.

The priests who shuffled about the temples were a hard lot.  Most of them were fugitives from justice and certainly looked the part, for a more disreputable, diseased and generally undesirable body of men I have never seen.

Our stay at Ling-suik was productive and the temple life interesting.  We slept on the porch and each morning, about half an hour before daylight, the measured strokes of a great gong sounded from the temple just below us. Boom—­boom—­boom—­boom it went, then rapidly bang, bang, bang.  It was a religious alarm clock to rouse the world.

A little later when the upturned gables and twisted dolphins on the roof had begun to take definite shape in the gray light of the new day, the gong boomed out again, doors creaked, and from their cell-like rooms shuffled the priests to yawn and stretch themselves before the early service.  The droning chorus of hoarse voices, swelling in a meaningless half-wild chant, harmonized strangely with the romantic surroundings of the temple and become our daily matin and evensong.

At the first gong we slipped from beneath our mosquito nets and dressed to be ready for the bats which fluttered into the building to hide themselves beneath the tiles and rafters.  When daylight had fully come we scattered to the four winds of heaven to inspect traps, hunt barking deer, or collect birds, but gathered again at nine o’clock for breakfast and to deposit our spoil.  Caldwell and I always spent the afternoon at the blue tiger’s lair but the animal had suddenly shifted his operations back to Lung-tao and did not appear at Ling-suik while we were there.

Our work in Fukien taught us much that may be of help to other naturalists who contemplate a visit to this province.  We satisfied ourselves that summer collecting is impracticable, for the heat is so intense and the vegetation so heavy that only meager results can be obtained for the efforts expended.  Continual tramping over the mountains in the blazing sun necessarily must have its effect upon the strongest constitution, and even a man like Mr. Caldwell, who has become thoroughly acclimated, is not immune.