RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f
June 12th

Dr. T. Y. Li

July 10th

Mr. G. Findlay Andrew, O.B.E.

September 20th Professor B. P. Groslier

"Chinese Seals"

"Currency Problems in a Cycle of Cathay"

"Recent Work in Angkor"

October 30th

Mr. Holmes H. Welch

"The Buddhist Monk's Career"

December 11th Professor F. S. Drake

"Nestorian Crosses and Nestorianism in China under the Mongols"

Some of these lectures will be reproduced in the forthcoming Journal of the Society. We are particularly fortunate in being able to include the memorable address of Professor Drake on Nestorian Crosses, even though the printed article cannot reproduce the warmth and inspiration of his personal eloquence and exposition.

The first Journal of the Society produced last year by the Editorial Board and completed, in the absence of Mr. Cranmer-Byng, by Mr. James Liu, had a very good reception. The Editors are to be congratulated on a worthy production which has set a pattern and standard for the future and which I feel will be more than sustained in this year's issue which, it is hoped, will be ready for delivery in May or June next.

The report of the Hon. Treasurer, Mr. T. J. Lindsay, will, in his absence on leave, be presented to you by Mr. A. L. Harman of The Hong Kong Bank, who has been good enough to step into the breach. Some features of the Report deserve serious attention. In the first place, we had at the end of 1961 a narrow margin of $2,265.61 over and above our expenditure and $4,790.94 cash in the Bank. In addition, we had a capital investment of $16,247.25 at cost. This apparently favourable financial position is mainly due to donations of $500 each from three leading concerns in the Colony, Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co., and The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, together with a magnificent gift of $10,000 from an anonymous donor given in 1960 in memory of Arthur de Carle Sowerby. These are non-recurrent benefactions, however, and I

7
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
NOTES AND QUERIES

MISSING MAPS: SOWERBY'S "SPORT & SCIENCE ON THE SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER”

The name of Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) is closely connected with the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was President, 1936-1940. He was a contributor to the Hong Kong Naturalist and the author of numerous books on natural history and sport in northern China. The present note relates to one of his books.

In the author's introduction to his Sport and science on the Sino-Mongolian frontier (London, Andrew Melrose, 1918), speaking of the six scientific explorations and hunting trips between 1908 and 1912 which provided the subject matter of the book, Sowerby states (p.x):

The results of the compass traverses have been carefully reduced to a convenient scale (1,000,000), and maps will be found in the cover-pocket at the end of the book.

No copy of this work, however, has any maps, and the explanation is found in a brief manuscript note, date-stamped May 22 1922, attached to the front fly leaf of the Hankow Club Library copy, now in the University of Hong Kong Libraries. This reads:

Dear Dr. Skinner,

With reference to the maps mentioned in the preface of my book. They were never published — and the publisher failed to delete the notice of them in the preface.

Yours faithfully,

A. de C.S.

Dr. A. H. Skinner was the librarian of the Hankow Club for many years, and in his preface to the "China Class" catalogue, 1922, he acknowledges the advice received regarding book selection on special subjects from, amongst others, Dr. Arthur de C. Sowerby.

Hong Kong, June 1979

H. A. RYDINGS
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j
189

investigated 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.

During 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.

Kozloff 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.

I 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.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
CONTENTS

PRESIDENT'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xii

FRIENDS OF THE RAS (UK) REPORT.................... xxvi

AUDITOR'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xxviii

HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ............................................................................................................. xxxv

ARTICLES

Dan Waters - Laughter Across the Great Wall: A Comparison of Chinese and Western Humour ........ 1

Keith Stevens - Images of Sinicised Vedic Deities on Chinese Altars ................................................ 51

Richard J. Garrett - Weapons of the China Wars ............................................................................... 107

Keith Stevens - Naturalist, Author, Artist, Explorer and Editor, and Almost Forgotten President: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885 - 1954, President of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935 - 1940 ............ 121

Keith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - Xu, the Taoist Perfected Lord Xu Zhenjun, the Protective Deity of Jiangsi Province........... 137

Gillian Bickley - Plum Puddings and Sharp Boys, "One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin": An Analysis of the China Coverage in the Illustrated London News, 5 January to 23 September, 1861 ........ 147

Keith Stevens - The Deification of Heroes Following the Struggle by the Vassal State of Chou to Overthrow the Shang Dynasty...... 173

Keith Stevens - Temples Arise from the Ashes of Revolution ........................................................... 187

vii
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
NATURALIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, EXPLORER AND EDITOR

AND AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT

Arthur de Carle Sowerby 1885-1954

President of the North China Branch

of

The Royal Asiatic Society 1935 - 1940

KEITH STEVENS

121

Although the lives of many Western expatriates who lived in China and experienced the excitements and horrors of travel and the exoticism of the old civilisation cry out to be recorded, most expatriates lived mundane, cliché-ridden existences, apart from the occasional excitement caused by the troubles and emergencies of the times, brigandage, rioting, and war. They never, or only very rarely, ventured far from their Treaty Port and certainly not into the dark hinterland of China. Should they have ventured anywhere at all, it would have been to hunt or shoot in the immediate area of the Port or go to a nearby beach or classical tourist site, such as Nanking or Soochow. And of all, only a mere handful of those who did venture far afield have left sufficient records to enable a portrait of their life to be disentangled and recorded. Arthur de C. Sowerby was one such venturer.

Before the centenary of his and his family's fortunate furlough in 1900 passes, I wanted to pay a debt of pleasure to the author and publisher, Arthur Sowerby, on behalf of all those who gained some insight into a China now long departed.

I have unorthodox reasons for taking a special interest in Arthur Sowerby. Beginning some years ago, a train of circumstances led me to him when I bought several unbound second-hand copies of the China Journal published by him and his wife in Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. I was then drawn by a series of coincidental incidents to the fascinating and exciting period of his life, his early years. Each of these incidents has had some significance to me, ranging from the city of
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
134

have therefore added it here for the record.

The Sowerbys were an old family of Saxon stock that can be traced back to the time of Edward the Confessor, and possibly earlier to the first kings of Kent in the fifth century AD.

Arthur de Carle Sowerby was the great grandson of James Sowerby, who died in 1822, the botanist who wrote English Botany and was one of the founder members of the Geological Society. His son in turn continued his work and helped organise the Royal Botanic Society and Gardens in Regent's Park.

On his mother's side Arthur was descended from Pierre Séguier, the Chancellor of France in the reign of Louis XIII; he was also the great grandson of Anthony Stuart, the miniature and portrait painter of the early Victorian period. Arthur's uncle was part-founder and first Keeper of the National Gallery of Portraits in Trafalgar Square.

At the end of his schooling he began his training to be an artist but soon left it for that of a scientist, working for his BSc. at Bristol. He returned to China having dropped out of College and after his arrival back in China he was appointed in 1906 in the double capacity of lecturer and curator on the staff of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin.

He served in France during World War 1 as Technical Officer in the Chinese Labour Corps, and on his return to China made his headquarters in Shanghai where he remained until the end of the Second World War.

He developed an interest in Chinese Art and was impressed by the accuracy of ancient Chinese craftsmen in modelling pottery animals for the tomb, an accuracy that enabled him as a naturalist to identify the breeds of various domestic animals in use in ancient China. He wrote a series of articles for the China Journal on Birds in Chinese Art; the Owl in Chinese Art; The Flora in Chinese Art; Rocks, Mountains and Water in Chinese Art; Animals in Chinese Art; as well as Animals in the Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales of China. His interest in craftsmanship also led him to write a series of articles on Chinese arts and crafts, including four papers on the Chinese ivory industry.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
136

I am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for the following information:

An announcement from a China mail of 1925. Married, at Shanghai, yesterday, Miss Clarice Sara Moise, to Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby, publisher of the China Journal of Arts and Science. Will of wife, Clarice Clara Sowerby, probated in Hong Kong in 1948, written in Shanghai 1933, in favour of her husband Arthur de Carle Sowerby of Shanghai, and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby. Sister, Nina Ethel Moise. Will of Sowerby himself: Arthur etc., probated in Hong Kong, 1955, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, scientist, at present residing at Fairfax Hotel (?), 2100 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC. Wife, Alice Muriel Sowerby. If predeceased, sister-in-law, Nina Ethel Moise, 6485 San Marco Circle, Hollywood, to receive half; and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby, to get the other half. Will written 7th November, 1949. A death record of Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 16th August 1954.

Carl Smith also commented that it was known that Sowerby had children (sic) by a Chinese woman. It would appear that most expatriates in Shanghai were unaware of Sowerby's first marriage in Tientsin to William Mesny's niece, Mary Anne, and that the reference to the 'children by a Chinese woman,' remembering that Mary Anne's mother had been Chinese, suggests that Sowerby's first marriage had been quietly 'forgotten.'

i The bandits were referred to as the Ko-lao Hui, the Elder Brother Society, an old powerful secret society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch'ing government and punishable by death. Their gangs robbed and killed far and wide as well as causing trouble with their inter-gang feuding.

ii The British Residents' Association was formed in 1931 to enable long-term residents to have a say in the running of the Concession. At about the same time, in order to support the authorities in the Concession following the recent troubles and crises, a body known as the Shanghai Fascisti was organised, and led for a while by Sowerby. The Fascists at this time were regarded by many as an honourable force against encroaching communism.

iii John Mesny died in 1884 in Hankow leaving a widow and eight children, all under the age of sixteen.

iv Davidson-Houston, JV: Armed Pilgrimage : Robert Hale Ltd : London: 1949

v Journal of Oriental Studies Vol. II. No. 1. January 1955 [University of Hong Kong]
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