Mrs. Ruth Harkness has recently returned to Shanghai from Cheng-tu in West China, whither she had travelled by air from New York in the record time of eight days in order to take over a live male giant panda which Mr. Quentin Young had cabled her he had secured from native hunters. She had made plans to travel to West China to secure a mate for the surviving female Panda in the Chicago Zoo, travelling by way of Europe to India, thence throughout Burma to Yunnan and so on to Cheng-tu, capital of Szechuan Province, from where she would go into the wild mountainous areas on the Chinese-Tibetan border. Mr. Young's cable caused her to change these plans and to proceed to China by the fastest possible route. Flying to San Francisco from New York, she took the Trans-Pacific Clipper to Manila, thence to Hongkong and again by air to Cheng-tu, accomplishing the whole journey in eight days.
She found Mr. Young with two live giant pandas, a half grown male and an infant female. Unfortunately, however, the male had to be shot, as it went completely berserk during a terrific thunder storm one night, smashed its cage to splinters and broke loose. It displayed unbelievable savagery and strength, thereby throwing a new light on panda character and disposition. There was nothing to do but shoot it. Strangely enough, the female displayed a completely different disposition from those of the two females Mrs. Harkness previously secured and took to America, and the third female recently sent to the Bronx Zoo in New York, for it was savage and utterly intractable. Mrs. Harkness could do nothing with it. She decided it was no use trying to take such an animal to America, and not wanting any one else to try doing this, she proceeded three days' journey into the mountains and turned the little creature loose in its native haunts. Mrs. Harkness has conceived the idea of taking another live baby giant panda to the United States to go on an exhibition tour, the proceeds of which should be devoted to Chinese war-refugee relief. Only for this purpose, she says, will
she go after another panda in West China.A. de C. S.