RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811
SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS

69

come to light. The Berlin State Library preserves several scrap-books compiled by Ottoman Turks where miniatures cut out from manuscripts are pasted in the album in much the same way as one collects stamps. This is surely a barbaric procedure, but many valuable specimens of early Persian and Turkish miniature painting have been preserved in this way. One of these so-called Saray Albums contains also a cutting from a Chinese painting — a fragment showing the Taoist saint Ha-ma with his toad, a well-known figure in Taoist hagiography. This must then come from a Yüan painting that somehow found its way to Persia.25

I am sure that a closer study of the old MSS in Persian libraries would furnish still more evidence of Mongol and Chinese influences during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

We have seen when discussing the presence of non-Chinese scientists in China that they were chiefly appreciated as technicians, practitioners and surgeons, and that Chinese medical theory was hardly influenced by Near Eastern medical thought. On the other hand, Chinese medicine became known in Persia under the Mongols. The famous Persian author and statesman, Rashid ad-Din was responsible for compiling a medical encyclopedia, Tangsuq-namāh-i Ilkhân dar funūni-ïulūm-i Khitai, "Treasures of the Ilkhan on the Sciences of Cathay", that is, China. This book was written in or about A.D. 1313. The illustrations in this work are evidently taken from some Chinese source. No similar translation of a Near Eastern work into Chinese seems to have survived, which shows how much cultural interchange in some fields was a one-way traffic under the Mongols.26

Persia presents, under the Mongols, a unique feature. Rashid ad-Din was the author of another work, the Jami' at-tawārīkh or "Collection of Histories". This book is the first world history which deserves that name. It contains not only a history of the Mongols but equally a history of the Europeans (the Franks), of the Indians and of the Chinese. The Chinese part of the Jami' at-tawarikh has not yet been properly edited (there are several manuscripts but no printed edition), and a thorough investigation of this text is needed. Preliminary studies have shown that Rashid ad-Din had Chinese informants and that his material was, in all probability, taken from a Chinese Buddhist chronicle. We may therefore say that, in the Mongol period, Persia was the only
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
64

COLONEL V. R. BURKHARDT

The main points of Walker's report are that its location was the Happy Valley—now entirely built up—and that the plant on which the insect fed was Buddleia asiatica. Its flight resembled that of one of the Hesperiidae, and that it fed vibrating the wings all the time, with its long tails elevated and quivering. The earliest date he recorded it was on 15th February, 1892, and a fine series was taken on 12th March. In 1893 it was scarce, and did not appear before 2nd April.

Nothing is said about the larval stages, or the food plant, but Steven Corbet in his Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula, mentioning an allied species Leptocircus meges, states that its larva has been found in Hong Kong on Illigera cordata: in general appearance it is like a Papilio larva, being dark greenish-brown at first, and then changing to dark apple green. The pupa is attached to the upper surface of a leaf of the food plant.

Since 1950 very few collectors in Hong Kong appear to have captured Lamproptera curius and only two instances have been brought to my notice prior to 1957. Lt. Col. J. Eliot took one female near Sai Kung on 2nd May, 1953, and another was secured by the wife of a member of the University staff.

All butterflies have their cycles of abundance and scarcity, though their incidence has yet to be determined, and 1957 was evidently a peak year for Lamproptera curius. Two collectors, Messrs. R. A. U. Todd and J. Hackney, on 9th June, found the insect swarming in a gully in the centre of the New Territories. Their description of the flight, like dragonflies, tallies with the observations of Commander Walker. The insects were feeding on wild buddleia, and rested between flights with spread wings on fern. Abundant larvae were also noted, but were not taken as they were thought to belong to one of the commoner Papilionidae. On a later visit on 6th July Mr. Todd brought in seven larvae in various stages, with an ample supply of the food plant. This is Illigera platyandra (Dunn) a tough vine with triple pointed leaves growing at intervals of about four inches. The larvae ranged in length from 9 mm to the full fed at 26 mm, which pupated on the following day.

In the early stages the larva is black over the thorax narrowing above the prolegs, and broadening out again over the tail. The
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