Page:Ling-Nam; or, Interior views of southern China, including explorations in the hitherto untraversed island of Hainan (IA cu31924023225307).pdf/141

 Along the Worth Asters 137

the vivet or fruit fox, which elimbs trees and devours the fruit, the cat fox, the hundred-footed fox, the opossum, said by the Chinese to have power to change its sex, a eat which has a musk pouch, and is sometimes called the “ spirit cat,” and monkeys, of which one hundred are sometimes seen in a band, tigers, leopards, sea-dogs, that live in holes, and whose bark is said to be very unlucky, hares, armadilloes, and hairy tortoises are specimens of the fauna.

The district also seems to be a healthy one if the chronicles of the place can be trusted, which state that within a comparatively short time twenty people were recorded as having reached the age of one hundred, and nearly one thousand who had lived to be over ninety, while the instances in which five or six generations were found living under one roof, and had received imperial recognition in the form of memorial gateways erected to commemorate such events, were found to be more than one hundred.

The local history abounds in records of remarkable events, About the year 715 A.D. myriads of rats appeared and destroyed the harvests. In 1533 ice formed a foot thick in the streams, killing the fish and destroying the trees on the land. Two years later the great sea-serpent, or dragon of the morasses, was seen in Yung-uen. In 1635; and again in 1657 and 1663, snow fell for several days in succession, reaching a depth of two feet. In 1639 a pig was born with a lion’s head and a red horn, and famine followed during the year. The years 1661, 1784, and 1793 were marked by tiger scourges in Yan-fa, scores of people being carried off. In some places the tigers were