234
NOTES AND QUERIES
mountains about Kuatun and Sanchiang.... It is secretive, hiding by day in the beds of the streams and apparently prowling by night." The only other record of the distribution of this species of which I am aware lists it for both Fukien and Chekiang (Anon., 1977).
Doubtless the specimen found in a catchment channel near Shek Kong had been carried down with water collected from a stream at a higher altitude, most likely from Tai Mo Shan.
REFERENCES
Anonymous (Compiled by the Amphibians and Reptiles Research Department of The Biological Research Institute of Szechwan Province)
1977 Systematic Keys to China's Reptiles. (In Chinese) Press, Peking.
Boulenger, G. A.
1912 A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London.
Pope, C. H.
1935 The Reptiles of China. Natural History of Central Asia, Vol. 10. The American Museum of Natural History, New York.
Smith, M. A.
1935 Sauria. Reptilia and Amphibia, Vol. 2. The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Taylor and Francis, London.
Hong Kong, 20 July 1978
J. D. ROMER
THE PUBLIC BOTANIC GARDEN OF HONG KONG
Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from April 1854 to May 1859, was a Governor with wide interests. In his History of Hong Kong, George Endacott relates (pp. 104-105):
He cared for cultural things; he set up a museum in one of the rooms of the Supreme Court to the annoyance of the court officials, and he was the leader of the local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was also very keen to set up a public Botanic Garden, and lectured to the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong on its value in spreading knowledge of Chinese trees, woods and fibres.