Mules have been imported into the Islands by the American authorities for the public service. If sold they would fetch about ₱300 each. They are the most satisfactory draught-animals ever introduced and, but for the fear of the new disease “surra,” might take the place of buffaloes in agriculture.
Sheep do not thrive in this climate. They are brought from Shanghai, and, as a rule, they languish and die in a few months. Oxen, goats, dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys, fowls, ducks, turkeys, and geese are among the ordinary domestic live-stock. Both the dogs and the cats are of very poor species, and the European breeds are eagerly sought for. The better class of natives have learned to appreciate the higher instincts of the European dog. Many Chinese dogs with long, straight hair, pointed nose, small eyes, and black tongues are brought over from Hong-Kong. All thoroughbred Philippine cats have a twist in their tails, and are not nearly so fine as the European race.
Natives do not particularly relish mutton or goatʼs flesh, which they say is heating to the blood. I have found stewed monkey very good food, but the natives only eat it on very rare occasions, solely as a cure for cutaneous diseases. No flesh, fish or poultry has the same flavour here as in Europe; sometimes, indeed, the meat of native oxen sold in Manila has a repulsive taste when the animal has been quickly fattened for the market on a particular herb, which it eats readily. Neither can it be procured so tender as in a cold climate. If kept in an ice-chest it loses flavour; if hung up in cool air it becomes flabby and decomposes. However, the cold-storage established by the American authorities and private firms, since 1898, has greatly contributed to improve the supply of tender meat, and meat shipments are regularly received from Australia and America.
The seas are teeming with fish, and there are swarms of sharks, whose victims are numerous, whilst crocodiles are found in most of the deep rivers and large swamps in uncultivated tracts. The Taclobo sea-shell is sometimes found weighing up to about 180 lbs. Fresh-water fish is almost flavourless and little appreciated.
In all the rice-paddy fields, small fish called Dalág (Ophiocephalus vagus), are caught by the natives, for food, with cane nets, or rod and line, when the fields are flooded. Where this piscatorial phenomenon exists in the dry season no one has been able satisfactorily to explain.
The only beast of prey known in the Philippines is the wild cat, and the only wild animal to be feared is the buffalo.
Both the jungles and the villages abound with insects and reptilia, such as lizards, snakes, iguanas, frogs, and other batrachian species, land-crabs, centipedes[1], tarantulas, scorpions, huge spiders, hornets, common beetles, queen-beetles (elator noctilucus) and others of the vaginopennous order, red ants (formica smaragdina), etc. Ants are the most common nuisance, and food cannot be left on the table a couple of hours without a hundred or so of them coming to feed. For this reason sideboards and food-cupboards are made with legs to stand in basins of water. There are many species of ants, from the size of a pinʼs head to half an inch long. On the forest-trees a bag of a thin whitish membrane, full of young ants, is sometimes seen hanging, and the traveller, for his own comfort, should be careful not to disturb it.
Boa-Constrictors are also found, but they are rare, and I have never seen one in freedom. They are the most harmless of all snakes in the Philippines. Sometimes the Visayos keep them in their houses, in cages, as pets. Small Pythons are common. The snakes most to be dreaded are called by the natives Alupong and Daghong-palay (Tagálog dialect). Their bite is fatal if not cauterized at once. The latter is met with in the deep mud of rice-fields and amongst the tall rice-blades, hence its name. Stagnant waters are nearly everywhere infested with Leeches. In the trees in dense forests there is also a diminutive species of leech which jumps into oneʼs eyes.
In the houses and huts in Manila, and in most low-lying places, mosquitoes are troublesome, but thanks to an inoffensive kind of lizard with a disproportionately big ugly head called the chacon, and the small house-newt, one is tolerably free from crawling insects. Newts are quite harmless to persons, and are rather encouraged than otherwise. If one attempts to catch a newt by its tail it shakes it off and runs away, leaving it behind. Rats and mice are numerous. There are myriads of cockroaches; but happily fleas, house-flies, and bugs are scarce. In the wet-season evenings the croaking of frogs in the pools and swamps causes an incessant din.
In the dry-season evenings certain trees are illuminated by swarms of fire-flies, which assemble and flicker around the foliage as do moths around the flame of a candle. The effect of their darting in and out like so many bright sparks between the branches is very pretty.