[
    {
        "id": 212651,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 205,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "186\n\nevery year from January to end of June; from end of September to the end of October. His hunting grounds were the provinces of Kiangsu and the mountainous country of Anhwei, except that in 1910, he collected on the Hwangshan range. In these 20 years, he brought back some 40,000 plants fully annotated especially the rare and not well known species. His Anhwei collection was published in 1933 by his successor H. Belval S.J..\n\nThe tome VI book 1 published in 1920 contains his Kiangsu 1918 collections 136 pages in quarto, with 23 plates.\n\nIt's interesting to follow him step by step, as he describes his daily encounters; oppressive heat in the valley; cold wind; pestilence around Nanking and Ousi; military movement hindering his projects; bands of inquisitive villagers hampering his work, especially his bird hunting; torrential rains several days sleeping in the open air; 12 hours walk; 60 li mountain climbing, often-dangerous storms; dinky boats; unreliable or even treacherous porters and so on and so forth.\n\n―\n\nF. Courtois' Bird collection was published also in 1920. It comprised 130 pages of text and 60 plates, and there was more forthcoming.\n\nBesides Heude's, Courtois' and some other minor collections, the Zi-Kia-Wei Museum had two collections worth mentioning. Both Floras of Hangzhou, one by Oliver, determined by Courtois and the other by Clive of the Chinese Customs.\n\nThe Musée Heude\n\nIn 1930, the Heude Museum was built as an annex to the University of Aurora, on Avenue Dubail, now Chong Qing Rd. (South). I understand the University is now the 2nd Medical University, and the Museum has become an Entomological Research Centre.\n\nI think Dr. Henry Belval S.J. was given the task of transferring the extensive collections of the Zi-Kia-Wei Museum and the vast library to the Musée Heude, then a majestic building with a garden richly endowed with a variety of rare species.\n\nI never met Dr. Belval. He must have gone back to France in 1932. I arrived in Shanghai from Beijing in September 1935.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    {
        "id": 212652,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 206,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "187\n\nremember from hearsay, Dr. H. Belval had come to Shanghai and worked as Head of the Chemistry Department at the University of Aurora where he researched plant sugars. He was replaced at the Dept. of Chemistry by one of my colleagues, Dr. Georges Durr, a Marist.\n\nDr. Belval was also a keen botanist and as such he was Director of the Musee Heude. He was responsible for the transfer of the Museum to its new premises and was its Director from 1929 to 1931. During this time, he prepared the publication of Courtois' Collection Petite Flore des environs de Changhai et de Nanking (Little Flora of the Shanghai and Nanking areas). It has never been published.\n\nBelval was succeeded by Octave Piel S.J., an entomologist with an interest in Chinese Archaeology and Art.\n\nNow I come to my own connection with the Heude Museum, its activities and its staff.\n\nBr. Paul August F.M.S.\n\nWhen I arrived in Shanghai from Beijing in September 1935, I had the good fortune of being appointed at St. Joan of Arc's College, a bilingual school of English and French media. There, I met Paul August. This humble man was Assistant Headmaster and Bursar of this school, full-time teacher of English, Mathematics, French and Latin. In spite of that heavy assignment, he took time to accumulate an enormous amount of scientific data and personal observations: notes on plants and insects collected by himself, study on chemicals, geology, petrology, weather observations, etc. His notes fill six large books written in a perfect handwriting. He had provided the Heude Museum with thousands of specimens of insects and hundreds of plants carefully packed and fully annotated.\n\nSo, for 10 years, this was one of the men I was going to live with. We soon found common interests and I owe to him, not only the development of my scientific studies in Natural History but also the scientific discipline of mind and action which transcends that of an amateur.\n\nFor 10 years, we used to take long walks in the countryside that was Hungjiao, Lunghua, Jiangwan etc. in the 40s and 50s and come back with plants, insects and other specimens collected there. Then, at home,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    {
        "id": 212654,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 208,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "189\n\ninvestigated the special field of Chinese Medicinal Plants and published a book \"An Atlas of Chinese Medicinal Plants\". It was wartime and, owing to some unskilled people who helped him, his 125 specimen drawings, the typing and the printing of his French manuscript, were full of errors. I corrected this publication and filled 12 typed pages. Years after, as I corresponded with someone in Malagasy, I discovered that J. Roi was there. I wrote to him and among other things, I asked him about his book. He told me he had published another one on the same subject. I ordered a copy from Paris: Les Plantes Medicinales Chinoises. This was a quite different achievement, a well-documented and well-presented volume containing chemical analysis, explaining the uses of plants and their extracts, with references from Chinese and European Medical Literature.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, at the end of 1941, I often met scientists who normally would have been connected with the Shanghai Museum in the International Settlement. One of them was Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby. He had offered the Museum a small but interesting collection of plants from Eastern China. This was prepared and published in 1950 by I. V. Kozloff, a Russian botanist who was working at the Museum at that time. But his main publication at the Heude Museum was his book illustrated by the author in Chinese-style drawings. Unfortunately, it was printed on newsprint paper, the only type available at that time. Copies couldn't last long.\n\nKozloff was a white Russian botanist who had acquired a good knowledge of the North China flora. He had many articles to his credit. When he came to Shanghai in the 40s, he couldn't find a job as he spoke only Russian. He contacted me through the school where his son was studying. I found out that he was living in an attic with his family and that they were starving. He was invited to work at the Museum with a decent salary. Later, he migrated to the USA.\n\nI could not fail to mention Charles De Vol, of America's Fern Society who was encouraged by Dr. Roi to publish Courtois' fern collection. When Dr. Belval published Courtois' Flora, he did not include the Pteridophyters. De Vol's book is a classic but suffered the effects of the war, i.e., lack of proper proofreaders, poor printing, and wartime paper. I met De Vol again at the Herbarium of the University of Taipei. He had contributed the volume on Ferns in the Flora of Taiwan.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212655,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 209,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "190\n\nFr. Decooman who succeeded Becquaert as an entomologist, was appointed Director of the Museum after the war. He did not belong to the same Society or Order as his predecessors. He was a member of a Belgian Order. He had come from Vietnam (French Indo-China) where he had spent some 40 years. As a missionary in remote areas, he spent his free time collecting insects. He was a trained entomologist, specializing in the Scaritidae family. He first directed his attention to reorganizing the museum that had suffered neglect by his predecessor and had thousands of insects mounted from collections still lying unpacked in the drawers. He also looked for manuscripts which could be published. At that time, I was part-time in charge of the Botany Section of the Museum, Fr. Decooman approached me and suggested that I should prepare Belval's manuscript as well as one of my own: Trees and Shrubs of Shanghai for publishing. I was working on these two projects when I met the young Hsu Pin-shen, already a keen botanist, now Professor and President of the Botany Department in Shanghai and in all China. We worked together on the Trees and Shrubs of Shanghai; that was in 1950-52. Needless to say, the events that followed did not allow the publication of these two manuscripts. But between Hsu Pin-shen and myself, a lasting friendship had developed which was delightfully revived when Prof. Hsu kindly invited me to spend a month with him at Fudan University.\n\nThe purpose of my visit to Shanghai is actually to update not exactly Belval's manuscript but one based on it; one more complete and developed, written by my colleague Paul August and to which I contributed as we were working in collaboration. Besides updating the manuscript, I must also include the section on the Pteridophytes which was lacking in both manuscripts. To this effect, I was invited by Prof. Zhan Sho-Ling and the municipality of Shanghai to spend six months here, in this country which was for 18 years my country of adoption. The project is sponsored by the University of Melbourne and funded by The Australia-China Council. My work so far has been made easy, thanks to the great help given to me by the Museum of Natural History and to the friendly collaboration of the office staff.\n\nI must thank Prof. Hsu and my colleagues at the Botany Department for the invaluable help they have been giving me. But their acceptance of an old foreigner among the staff, the attention and friendship they have shown to me will be valued much more and will last as long as I live.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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]