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First edition, first printing, of this investigation of Chinese fish, amphibians, and reptiles, with the decorative bookplate of Stanley Wyatt-Smith (1887-1958), Senior District Officer at Weihaiwei and later Consul-General of Manila. Wyatt-Smith began his China consular career in 1907, holding a succession of postings in major cities including Hankou and Shanghai. A leading naturalist of his day, Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, to a Baptist missionary. In the early 20th century, he began collecting specimens for the Taiyuan museum of natural history and subsequently joined the zoological Bedford expedition in 1906. Having served with the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War, he returned to China and settled in Shanghai, where he founded the China Journal of Science and Arts. Two chapters discuss the blue sheep of Gansu and the former imperial hunting grounds. In the same decade as he published this account, Sowerby also released his three-volume magnum opus, The Naturalist in Manchuria (1922, 1923 & 1930). Czech, p. 196. Tall octavo. Original pale yellow cloth, spine and front cover lettered and with vignettes in brown. With half-tone frontispiece showing 5-foot salamander, 19 similar plates, sketches by author in text. Cloth lightly soiled, spine sunned, text and plates fresh, light browning to endpapers. A very good copy.