The following is my translation of an article called: Takin and Wapiti, zwei seltene Wildarten Chinas von Dr A Lanick. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1913, Heft 10, Seiten 386-390. Readers would be delighted by the glorious illustrations that adorn the original, and so I've not included them. It's possible that some of the Chinese place names are no longer appropriately written. Europeans have difficulties when attempting to transcribe them, and various versions may arise.
I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Takin and wapiti, two rare wild animals of China by Dr A Lanick
China has been brought closer to West European cultures over the last decades, and since decades peaceful travel through this enormous Empire of the Far East has ceaselessly continued but, nevertheless, this vast land still provides us with endless novelties even today, and this means that every journey to Inner China, even if they are not undertaken for reasons of research, can bring worthwhile discoveries to light. We must presently content ourselves with setting brick next to brick, and only much later will we be able to construct a building from this material.

It was mainly for sporting reasons that the Englishman, Harald Frank Wallace, arranged for a hunting and research expedition through Inner China, which went from Shanghai to Omsk right through the Gobi Desert. He encountered two rare wild species on his travels, the Takin and the Wapiti deer. Both these game species are at home in the mountains of the Chinese Provinces of Shensi and Kansu, which lie south of the Gobi Desert between 100° and 110° latitude east, about the same as our colony of Kiautschau.

The account given by the Englishman* enticed me to form the plan of seeing the hunting grounds of the Takin and Wapiti for myself. I soon found companions in an engineer of the Sichantung-Bergwerksgesellschaft and a respected Chinaman from our colony, who wanted to take part in the trip. We made ourselves free from business for a few weeks for our journey last autumn. The fabulous trip first took us west on our German Shantung train, and then into the interior of the great empire, and there is not enough space here to report on it. After travelling for days, partly by very demanding riding, and after hiring the necessary native guides and porters, we pressed on into the ranges of the Takin.

(* The Big Game of Central and Western China, London, Murray.)

The mountains are wild and romantic with broken cliff crests running along granite slopes, and chasms led down in the background, and lost themselves in a thicket of rhododendron. Grey bands of rock fell steeply though forests of larch trees, their gentle colours lit in the sun and their branches casting deep, dark shadows. In the constantly humid valleys hung a light mist, which made the depths appear milder and lent the heights the appearance of aesthetic fineness bathed in soft, turquoise green or purple. Then the mists balled together, spread out across the tops of the trees as gentle, pink clouds, and then covered the valley in white masses and hid it from view. In the distance could be heard the rushing of a stream and the busy hammering of a forest woodpecker, as an eagle, whose nest stood on some cliff, drew round in circles in the heights of the sky. To our feet, there was a confusion of rotting trunks and moss covered blocks of stone between the flowers. Then came a thicket of trees, shrubs, birches, larches, firs, blackcurrants and other wild bushes mixed with giant rhododendrons and azaleas, that grow between the cliffs and mountains in spring, and let it glow with the splendour of flowers and colours as can otherwise be found nowhere else of Earth.

The Takin (Budorcas bedfordi) lives in this paradise, a strange animal named Rock goat in the Shansi and Wild bison in Kansu. Our illustration presents a characteristic picture of this peculiar animal. A subspecies (Budorcas taxicolor) had already been discovered and described from the northern border of Assam by Hodgson in 1850. But the Chinese Takin has certain obvious differences from its already known brother.

We pitched our camp halfway up the slope of a mountain, and scanned the whole area with powerful binoculars. We did not need to look for long. Something emerged from a thicket, first one, then more and then hordes of them on all sides. The animals glowed gold-yellow in the sunshine, a gripping, unexpected sight! We could easily tells the bulls from the cows on account of the size, as the latter are somewhat smaller and their colour is also lighter, more silver.

Under the cover of the thicket and the wind, we crept carefully up on the herd, and were soon able to observe the animals from close quarters. With the head deeply sunk, they trotted slowly around eating grass from here and then the young shoots of a bush from there. When they turned their backs to us they looked like living bears, so fat were their behinds, so shaggy the hairs that hide the short, weird tail. We noticed that the bulls go over to more of a red colour in the area of the neck, comparable to the fur of a lion, and a dark stripe runs along the back. These back stripes are stronger for the young animals than the adults, and it is dark grey at the neck and a chocolate brown at the tail. The amusing small ones also have dark hairs on the edge of the ear and a dark snout. The legs and rear are darker for them as well.

The behaviour of the herd was harmless, they did not appear to want to notice our proximity, and I have never come across a game species which allows the hunter to approach so closely without becoming in the least disturbed. That had made us too confident, then suddenly a bull did take notice, turned its lumbering skull in our direction and issued a lively cough. In an instant, the whole herd was excited and, with a speed and mobility which we would not have trusted for such plump figures, the Takins were off, and only the distant cracking of twigs allowed us to recognise the direction which they had taken.

We did not come to a shot on that occasion, but that had not been our objective. We had a few weeks available for our Takin hunt, and first wanted to observe the animals in peace. We soon got to know more about them and, in general, what we found confirmed the reports about them from Wallace. They are not particularly shy and are, therefore, easy to creep up on. An exception was only provided by adult bulls, which mostly roam around on their own. They have namely a habit of stretching their necks out and then lying flat on the ground at the approach of danger, and do not move themselves even if the hunter is standing right by them. This makes it hard to see their position, and it will often spare them from the danger.

The Takin herds are generally used to remaining in their feeding places, and only move elsewhere should they have been scared by constant disturbances. The leadership of a herd is always assumed by a bull, and the trust in this leader is unconditional among all its followers. A native hunter explained to us that he had once shot one of these leading bulls and, in its death panic, the fatally wounded animal sprang into a descent. Without thinking further, the whole herd of about 100 Takins followed their leader, and crashed into the depths.

The courting season of the Takins falls in the time between the end of July and the beginning of August, and the calves, only one of which is generally produced, arrive on the world at the end of March or the start of April. Then the cows leave the herds with their calves, and go alone onto the pasture. The small animal can already follow the mother everywhere after 3 days, and is fully reared and independent within a month. Then follows the general assemblage into large herds, which will seek out their pasturage commonly.

As well as the Takin, the Wapiti (Cervus kansuensis, Additional note: Cervus elaphas kansuensis is one current interpretation) of Kansu was also of interest for our hunting trip, a now rare game animal. This deer, which is an entirely different animal to the Wapiti known from America, lives in large numbers in the high mountains of Central Asia along with Mountain goats, the Mountain sheep and other deer. Unfortunately, the population of Wapiti in China is much endangered. The destruction of the once vast forests, in which the animal lived, has gone ever further and the living conditions for the Wapiti have grown ever scarcer. Even more dangerous for this noble breed is the enmity of people. The medicinal value of the deer horn has namely been fantastically overestimated in China, and the natives hunt the Wapiti with fanatical greed for this reason, as only the horn can bring in money. The hunt of the animal, with the exception of two months, is permitted through the whole year, and those two months of protection, May and June, are the ones in which the deer receive their new antlers, having cast off the old ones in April. As soon as the new antlers have reached a certain size, the murderous hunt begins again, and the short-sighted natives do not consider the possibility of the extinction of this precious animal. The numbers of Wapiti are sinking shockingly rapidly due to this senseless hunting and, unless the Chinese government does not soon put a stop to this, then the Wapiti of Kansu will shortly belong only to history. As well as people, there is also naturally another deadly enemy, the Tsaikou, a wild dog that is somewhat smaller than the common wolf. However, on its own, this predator would never be in a position to noticeably reduce the, formerly, inexhaustible herds of Wapiti.

We had exceptionally bad luck with our Wapiti hunts, as we only once had a head before our eyes, and only got to bring down a single stag. At the first glance of the animal, we thought we were looking at a large Red deer, and this judgement was strengthened by the cry, which is like that of the Red deer but somewhat deeper. It was only from the shot animal that we could ascertain that it was a Wapiti. The fur is a fairly uniform red-brown, which is punctuated all over with spots, dull rings that are found on each hair. On the flanks, the fur is somewhat greyer and, towards the stomach, the dull rings of their hairs become wider, and this makes the whole colour noticeable lighter until, on the belly itself, it is entirely white. The forehead is brown and speckled, lips and chin are uniform deer brown without any spots. In contrast, a dark area beneath the corners of the mouth can clearly be recognised. There is a dark brown particularly along the spine, the hairs of which gradually give over to white at the root of the tail. Our illustrations show the Wapiti of Kansu in a few characteristic postures.

Perhaps the new government of China, assuming that revolution does not become an annual occurrence in the Empire, will succeed with bringing in measures for the protection of this noble game animal which, otherwise, will soon fall victim to human greed.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.