previous experience of the conditions of tibetan travel had taught me that collection and observation was a task requiring complete immunity from other duties; but to the doctor of such an expedition this condition was not attainable. in the collection of specimens we were, however, fortunate in obtaining the assistance of several other members of the expedition. but it is especially to major norton that the thanks of the everest committee are due, for in addition to his other duties, he took over the whole of the botanical work and worked equally with myself in all other branches of zoology. his gift of painting was particularly valuable in leading to the certain identification of birds in districts where collecting was prohibited. at the time of writing he is on duty at chanak, and the following notes lose half their value through lack of his promised collaboration, which i had anticipated with particular pleasure.
in his absence i must omit all reference to botany, for personally, owing to the wintry conditions during our outward march and to the speed of my journey back with the invalids, i saw nothing that has not been already better 322described by wollaston. but norton, with our lepcha collector rumoo, obtained some 350 flowering plants in kharta, and we also sent back samples of agricultural seeds.
it must be remembered that it was the constant aim of general bruce to render it easier for any subsequent party to pass through the country. the objection of the tibetans to the taking of any wild life is almost universal amongst the clerics and is devoutly shared by the lay population in certain localities. these considerations unfortunately applied particularly to the districts of tengkye, shelkar dzong and rombuk, where the killing of even domestic animals is prohibited.
there are, however, other parts of tibet where the same restraint is unnecessary, and even where hunting is habitually practised by the semi-nomadic population. this immunity in our case applied especially to the chumbi valley and the country round phari, and in consequence we have been able to bring back some material which it is hoped will add to the value of the larger collections brought back last year by dr. wollaston.
that portion of tibet visited by the expedition, and indeed it is typical of most of its provinces, is a region of bare uplands and naked mountains. such physical conditions combine with a violent type of radiation in the thin dry air to evolve a daily strife of winds, ceaselessly seeking to rectify the balance of atmospheric stability; this continual wind is indeed the foundation of the traveller’s 323discomfort and the worst enemy of the mountaineer.
romoo, the lepcha collector, who assisted
dr. longstaff and major norton.
karma paul, the expedition’s interpreter.
owing to its aridity, due to the intervention of the rain-catching himalaya, the country is practically treeless. distant open views prevail over vast landscapes, lit by strong lights in an atmosphere devoid of fogs or softening mist effects. usually nothing can move without being visible from a great distance. hence, though it is not a region particularly rich in life, yet those forms which do prevail are not easily overlooked. concealment is only to be obtained by burrowing underground, or by immobility combined with protective coloration.
nowhere is this more obtrusively shown than on the great stony uplands, at an altitude of from 14,000 to 17,000 feet east and south of khamba dzong. here we were in constant sight of bands of wild asses, gazelle, and sheep: from a distance of a couple of miles a prowling wolf was easily discerned. the ground is nowhere here covered by a continuous carpet of grass or herbs, but each plant is several yards from the next. hence even a small herd of game will cover the ground with innumerable tracks, suggesting to the uninitiated a far greater number of individuals than really exist. to watch a flock of tibetan sheep or goats grazing seems like watching a migration, for the herd moves at a smart walk, often breaking into a run, each individual racing for the next mouthful a few yards ahead. they move on a wide front, with the shepherd and his wolf-dog well in evidence. on one occasion we came on a wolf devouring a lamb: 50 yards away lay the guardian 324dog, waiting apparently for any scraps the robber might leave.
it might be supposed that as in the arctic the birds and animals would turn white in winter. but two sufficient reasons against this necessity have already been indicated. firstly, the snow line is so high, probably between 19,000 and 20,000 feet, that vegetation does not extend up to it: even the predatory beasts are dependent on vegetation for the pasture of their prey. secondly, evaporation is so rapid that the country is never snow-clad for long even during the winter season.
but some modification of habit to meet the hostility of winter, under conditions of life already so severe, is to be looked for. of marmots we saw nothing during the journey to everest; probably they were still hibernating. norton found them later in kharta and obtained a welcome specimen. yet hares were very common at 16,000 to 17,000 feet, several haunting the old moraines of the rongbuk glacier even above our base camp. here also, at 17,000 feet, was a small herd of bharel, or blue sheep, which having some familiarity with the hermit monks permitted a fairly close approach.
more interesting are the mouse-hares, or pikas, of several varieties, small friendly creatures which live in colonies, mainly (ochotona curzoni?) on the open plains, where even their small burrows sometimes undermine considerable areas so that one must ride with care. they are quick and lively in their movements, darting from hole to hole with extreme 325rapidity, and peeping from their burrows at the stranger with obvious amusement. they are often first seen sitting up on their hind-legs. they lay in stores of grass for winter use, though the evidence all goes to prove that they do not regularly hibernate. they frequently utter a nearly inaudible high-pitched whispering call, a sort of subdued whistle, from which no doubt comes the (shoka) bhotia name of shippi, “the whisperer,” which i obtained in gnari khorsum in 1905. certain birds, as will be subsequently noted, live in association with these small rodents, and add a further note to the charm of their colonies. it appears impossible to trap them, and as their skulls are usually damaged by shooting, a good series of skins, in both summer and winter pelage, of the different species, is still much wanted for study in our museums.
the collection of small mammals is always difficult, and under the circumstances already detailed our collection of skins was necessarily a very small one. geoffrey bruce, however, obtained a perfect specimen of the panda (ailurus fulgens) from the forests on the chumbi side of the jelep la. this curiously aberrant animal, sometimes called the bear-cat, is about the size of a fox, and has rich thick fur of a chestnut colour on the back, black below, and with a thick bushy ring-marked tail; in appearance it resembles somewhat the badgers, the bears, and the cats. its relative, the great panda of tibet, is one of the rarest of large mammals, owing to its very circumscribed distribution.
a hamster and a few pikas of three varieties were caught 326at night in our tents. a weasel (m. temon) shot in sikkim, with another weasel and a marmot from kharta, complete our list of mammal skins. we are much disappointed at our failure to see or obtain any specimens from 20,000 feet, where wollaston’s pika was actually handled last year—the greatest known altitude for resident mammals.
as to the birds, we were fortunate in having been able to go over dr. wollaston’s collection with mr. norman b. kinnear of the natural history museum, who provided us in addition with a series of careful notes by which we could identify those likely to be met with in localities where we could not shoot. it is hoped that our material will be found sufficient for mr. kinnear to publish a supplement to his recent paper in the ibis on last year’s collection.
dr. percy r. lowe, keeper of birds of the natural history museum, was particularly anxious for us to obtain for him a specimen of the himalayan or ibis-billed curlew (ibidorhynchus struthersi) in the flesh, for purposes of dissection, nothing being known of its anatomy up to the present. luckily this bird haunts the chumbi valley, and norton and i were able to spend a day in its pursuit. it is of the form of a small curlew, of a general french-grey hue with bold dark markings, and coral red beak and legs. there were several of these birds, not yet (april 3) paired, about yatung in the chumbi valley, but they were very wary. they utter a high-pitched wader-like note not at all resembling our curlew. they always flew directly over the main river, whence we never could have retrieved them. the shores 327of this river are fringed by beaches of large round grey pebbles, and resting amongst these the birds were invisible. eventually i lay up under the bank and norton succeeded in driving a bird on to an island in mid-stream, where i shot it. with an outward display of truly scientific eagerness we divested ourselves of our nether garments and waded waist deep through the torrent. we came near quarrelling as to whether the water or the air was the coldest. but at any rate we retrieved our bird, and what is more brought it, duly preserved in spirits, through all the trials of travel and climate, safely back to dr. lowe.
in the chumbi valley also we obtained the great or solitary snipe (gallinago solitaria), an addition to last year’s list. but my favourite family, the redstarts, were the most interesting. the beautiful white-capped redstart (chimarhornis leucocephalus), mostly widely distributed in the himalaya, was still with us. the plumbeous redstart (rhyacornis fuliginosus) and the blue-fronted redstart (ph?nicurus frontalis) we had already obtained in sikkim. these also were present at the beginning of april in the chumbi valley. we obtained in addition the beautiful blue-tail or red-flanked bush-robin (tarsiger rafiliatus). i understand that the three latter species have not been previously recorded from this locality. the blue-tail frequents dense bushes over marshy spots and is very quiet and furtive in its habits, while the redstarts are the most obtrusive of birds, as to me they are one of the most beautiful of families. at phari i luckily obtained a specimen of 328what i thought was the indian redstart, but the bird in the hand proved again to be the blue-fronted sort. at 17,000 feet, above the base camp over the snout of the main rongbuk glacier, i saw a cock-bird of güldenstadt’s redstart (ph?nicurus erythrogaster grandis), fortunately a very easily recognisable bird, and one i had previously seen in nubra and the karakoram country.
although i had previously become somewhat familiar with bird-life in tibet, i was not prepared to see the teeming flocks of finches, buntings, and larks which we met with on the bare stony uplands at every old camping ground or village we encountered. a portion of this swarming bird population appears to have been due to the spring migration being at its height. of this we had evidence before and during our passage of the jelep la, from sikkim into the chumbi valley. at phari and at khamba dzong especially, the birds appeared not yet to have dispersed in pairs to their breeding territory, but, though actually arrived at their destination, to be still collected in migration flocks. yet this condition of things may be more apparent than real, for neither norton nor i ever managed to find any evidence of nesting behaviour in such an extremely common bird as brandt’s ground linnet. it is conceivable that the inimical climatic conditions of tibet are such as to condemn a larger proportion than usual of the bird population to a celibate existence, a condition which is at least by no means rare even in the british isles. a small piece of evidence is that the only four nests of larks and wagtails which i found 329contained only three eggs each, as if the altitude had reduced the number of eggs laid. it is to be noted that in each case the eggs were incubated, and so the clutches were presumably complete. but as an exception to this rule, at chushar, on june 13, i found a nest of the eastern desert wheatear with a normal clutch of five eggs.
in writing of nesting, it may be recorded that we obtained the eggs of the tibetan snow cock (tetraogallus tibetanus) from nearly 17,000 feet on the pang la. at the base camp (16,500 feet), a brown accentor (prunella f. fulvescens) commenced building its nest in a crevice between a stack of provision boxes in the middle of the camp on may 16. laying did not commence till may 25—a long period of delay—and was completed with the third egg on the 27th. the hen commenced to sit at once, and no more eggs were laid. norton observed alpine choughs and rock doves nesting in the cliffs above the base camp at an altitude of 17,000 feet. besides the usual ravens, and the species already named, the base camp was visited by brandt’s ground linnet (leucosticte brandti), a sparrow, a snow finch, the ground chough (podoces humilis), and the shore lark (otocorys alpestris elwesi).
noel, during his vigil on the chang la (23,000 feet), saw a small bird fly above him, borne on the westerly gale. but wollaston’s lammergeyer maintains still the first place in altitude with a record of over 24,000 feet.
at trangso chumbab, on june 11, i had the opportunity of observing the habits of blandford’s mountain-finch 330 (chionospiza blandfordi). this bird seems to live in amity with the pikas (ochotona curzoni?) in their burrows. i marked the birds bringing food to a pika burrow, and wishing to see what the young in down were like, finch and i commenced to dig out the hole. it proved, however, beyond our powers in the sun-baked ground, so i fell to watching again. we had laid open the burrow for about 2 feet. the hen-bird at once returned with food, but alighting at the spot where the burrow formerly commenced, began immediately to tunnel into the ground, quite oblivious of the true opening in full view only 2 feet away. what would our nature writers say to such a lapse of intellect? the bird burrowed with its beak, diving its head into the ground and boring with a very rapid jerky twist so that the sand was scattered in a small cloud. this was repeated several times and on several visits. i then filled up the trench, leaving the nesting hole open. on the next visit the bird flew down the hole, which i then stopped with loose earth. in the morning the burrow had been completely cleared and the birds were busily feeding their young again. this seems to point to the conclusion that these birds are naturally ground-dwellers, and are fully capable of making their own tunnels, but that the abundance of pika burrows has induced lazy habits. mandelle’s snow-finch (montifringilla mandelli), not obtained by last year’s expedition, was shot by us at pika warrens at phari (april 7), and seen, always associated with pikas, on the following days.
on june 11, also, we were witnesses to what must be a 331common tragedy. a family of small brahminy ducklings—the ruddy sheldrake of europe—were making their noisy way down from some nesting site on the steppe to the headwaters of the arun—and safety. the parent birds may have taken fright at our camp, through which the ducklings scuttled fearlessly. the loathsome ravens, gathered, as always, for carrion or camp refuse, swooped down and attacked the hapless family, bolting a whole duckling at each mouthful. surely a gun would have done no harm here.
norton made the interesting discovery that the meadow bunting (emberiza cia godlewskii) breeds in the kama valley, thus extending its breeding range far to the south. it may, indeed, be expected that several species now believed to breed only in siberia may in fact be found nesting on the northern slopes of the himalaya, and even in other highland regions of tibet. for here altitude comes to the assistance of latitude to produce an arctic type of climate, flora, and fauna; though it must be admitted that the aridity of tibet must produce very different climatic conditions to those obtaining in the far north. in gnari khorsum, 400 miles west of everest, i had obtained specimens, with young in down, of the large eastern sand plover (cirripedesmus mongolicus atrifrons), which previously was only known as a breeding species from much farther north; and again, the day we left tibet, at 17,000 feet, on the serpo la, i found another pair of these dotterel, from their behaviour obviously nesting, so to speak, at the very gates of india, for 33210 miles further on we had left everything tibetan behind us—landscape, flowers, birds, beasts, and insects were all different. nowhere else in the world can there be a sharper natural division than between the tibetan highlands and the true himalayan zone.
the physical and climatic conditions prevailing in this part of tibet produces an environment hostile to reptilian and amphibian life. the single toad obtained last year was quite new to science, and norton’s capture of a second specimen is a great piece of luck. miss joan b. procter, f.z.s., of the natural history museum, has described and named it (cophophryne alticola). it is remarkable by having the toes fully webbed. she also writes that the toad, together with the frog (nanorana pleskei) and the lizard (phrynocephalus theobaldi), are all devoid of external ears, the tympanum itself being absent in the toad. this unusual modification is attributed to the effect of altitude, but it has also been suggested that the absence of ears is due to inherited atrophy following generations of frost-bite—an interesting subject for the followers of weissman!
the fish, rejoicing in the name of schizopygopsis stoliczk?, is stated by mr. norman never to have been previously obtained from such an altitude.
with the molluscs we drew blank, in spite of norton’s energetic dredging of tarns and pools at kharta. nor did any member of the expedition produce a single snail-shell, though all were armed with pill-boxes and on the look out for them.
333it is probably only among the various families of insects that any important biological results may be hoped for from this expedition. our collection from the base camp, greatly due to the assistance received from morris, of more than 300 beetles of a dozen or more species, may be sufficient to show some evidence of the effect of environment. a number of them are new to science, and, with one or two exceptions, were not obtained last year. there are already described over 100,000 kinds of beetles, and under these circumstances it is obvious that even such a modest collection as ours will take some time to work out. mr. k. g. blair, of the natural history museum, has it in hand, and, with the assistance of mr. h. e. andrewes and dr. g. a. k. marshall, will certainly make the most of it. his preliminary note gives 160 specimens of four or perhaps five kinds of ground beetles (carabid?) belonging to genera of pal?arctic distribution. of the tenebrionids there are 140 specimens belong to six species, probably all new, but characteristic of the mountainous regions of central asia. of the weevils there are only seventeen specimens, but they appear to belong to seven new species. two of these were kindly collected by norton’s toad.
mr. b. p. uvarov is working out the orthoptera, and writes that our stick-insect (phasmid) is of great interest because the family is essentially a sub-tropical group and has never been recorded from any such high altitude before. we were lucky, also, in getting three more specimens of wollaston’s curious new grasshopper (hypernephia everesti, 334uvarov). at the same time, my old specimens from purang have been elevated into the type of a new species of a new genus (hyphinomos fasciata). future visitors are earnestly requested to collect every grasshopper-like insect they meet here, for the orthopterous fauna of high asia is wholly unexplored.
it must be remembered that we constantly passed through localities in which it was inadvisable to show even a butterfly-net. when recrossing the pang la (17,000 feet), i lagged behind and spent a laborious hour collecting disconcertingly quick-flying, woolly-bodied flies; these and others are being worked out by major e. e. austen, d.s.o.
there is also a burrowing bee (ammophia sp.), the most interesting insect i met. it is of a repellent ant-like aspect, of an evil black and red pattern. it flies astonishingly fast, and can only be netted by careful stalking when it lands to burrow in the sand. it is preparing a tomb for a paralysed grub in which it will lay its own egg; on hatching, the bee grub will feed on the living corpse of its entertainer. i first observed it by noticing, as i rode along the banks of the phung chu, tiny jets of sand being shot violently upwards from the ground, the insect itself being quite invisible. my pony, a true tibetan, loathed the sight of a butterfly-net; i had no companion to hold him, and the pursuit of science was attended by more than the usual trials.
a series of small moths was obtained at the base camp, and norton collected more in kharta. these are being 335worked out by mr. w. h. t. tams, but in the case of moths, identification is a particularly lengthy and laborious business.
the butterflies are naturally few in such an environment; nor does the constant wind make their breathless capture any easier. captain n. d. riley is working them out, and tells me that in general they resemble our english butterflies, with other alpine families. on a recent visit to the museum, i was excusing the scantiness of our collection, explaining that, as a rule, i had only been able to collect while crossing high passes. indicating a series of small dark brown “ringlets,” rather the worse for wear, i said that that was all i saw above 16,000 feet. “why that,” said riley, “is a new species of a new genus!” so may our successors seize every opportunity that offers of collecting even the least and most inconspicuous-looking insects in the endeavour to assist our research workers in adding some particle to the sum of our knowledge of nature.
the end
