Sonia put the pictures on the easel one by one with great interest and looked at them carefully, making sounds of surprise or joy from time to time.
Although Hualien is located on the main island of Taiwan, it is surrounded by mountains on three sides. Only the area facing the East China Sea can be entered by boat. Not to mention Europeans, even among the indigenous people of Taiwan, very few people have set foot here.
This is the place with the most abundant heat and rain in Taiwan, and is rich in animal and plant resources. It is easy to imagine that the expedition will definitely return with a full load.
Most of these museum paintings are of plants and animals whose specimens were collected in Hualien, as well as topography, landforms, and vegetation.
Sonia looked at the pictures and at the same time read the corresponding instruction manuals. There were not many new things about plants, most of them were specimens she had collected during several other expeditions; there was something about the collection of animal specimens. Many new gains.
She flipped through it and found dozens of animal pictures: sika deer, Taiwanese macaque, mountain qiang, long-maned goat, Taiwanese black bear, sambar; birds such as gray-faced vulture, sparrow hawk, black-faced spoonbill, Emperor pheasant, blue-bellied pheasant, Taiwan blue magpie, five-color bird and dawn swallowtail butterfly, cherry blossom salmon, green sea turtle, Taipei tree frog, mountain pepper fish, etc.
Among them, the long-maned goat, the Formosan black bear and some birds were the first specimens collected by the expedition team. In the past, Sonia had only seen simple morphological diagrams of these animals from the "Fauna of Taiwan" compiled by the Grand Library.
"Great, the Formosan black bear really does exist." Sonia admired the Formosan black bear written by Valentina and murmured to herself, asking, "Is the bear skin well preserved?"
"It's tanned."
"What, it's been tanned?" Sonia was shocked. Making taxidermy is essentially using stuffing to support the animal skin and restore its original shape. The peeled animal skin cannot be tanned, and most of it is in rawhide. It is preserved by applying toxic antiseptic drugs such as arsenic ointment.
"Teacher Cui said it doesn't matter. He used a special method. It will not affect the subsequent production."
Since it was the elder who said there was no problem, Sonia was relieved - the Australians had given her too many surprises, not just this one.
Sonia asked questions while watching, and also asked many questions about the investigation. Valentina had to remind her that she had not been to Hualien, and these were all based on "glass paintings".
The so-called "glass paintings" are actually digital photos. Printing photos is too technically difficult for the Senate, and there is no way to supplement the equipment and consumables. Therefore, the data captured with digital imaging equipment in this time and space are all in digital form and in various forms. They are stored in magnetic media storage and are often displayed on tablet computers, high-definition televisions and other playback devices. Since most of these devices have LCD screens, they are naturally called "glass pictures" by the naturalized people who come into contact with them.
Unlike relatively popular movies, very few naturalized citizens have access to "glass pictures" and are limited to a small number of professional and technical personnel. Naturally, Sonia and Valentina, who work at the Museum of Natural History, have seen it.
"Glass paintings" have a very high degree of image and color restoration, and can also record dynamic images. It is very convenient to record animals and plants, so Sonia didn't understand why the elders were so interested in "museum paintings" at first. Until Lin Hanlong
I once personally admitted that the Senate had not yet been able to convert the contents of the "glass pictures" into another medium.
"But those pictorials..." Sonia thought of the "pictorials" that Lin Hanlong secretly took home and made her blush when she saw them.
"Yes, yes, actually we have this technology, but we don't have the materials." Lin Hanlong roughly explained the raw materials needed to print photos.
"...Right now, we only have the ability to print simple black and white photos, which not only have no color, but also have very limited resolution."
Sonia did not ask further why they had this ability in "Australia" but not in China. She had learned her lesson and would not ask further.
“So when can we rebuild this technology?”
"This requires the efforts of many people and involves many disciplines. It will take about several years." Lin Hanlong said, "In fact, even with such technology, scientific painting is still very useful. Sometimes paintings can express things better than photos
Come up with details."
"It would be better if I could go there in person." Sonia said with emotion, "What a pity. Look, how beautiful the scenery is!"
What she saw was a colorful museum painting of landforms and scenery - although it was a scientific painting, it actually looked the same as a landscape painting.
"It's beautiful, but there are a lot of barbarians there. The expedition team was attacked," the Italian girl said, "I heard they specialize in cutting off people's heads!"
Of course Sonia knew about Taiwan's aborigines cutting off their heads with grass. When she went to Tainan for inspection, she visited an indigenous village full of human heads, and she also obtained a head cut from grass through a local Han vendor -
It has been drying for many years. The head is currently in a wooden box in the Natural History Museum.
"With the protection of the armed guards, what is there to be afraid of?" Sonia flipped through the landforms and landscapes one after another. These landform paintings reflect the scenery on the Hualien-Taitung Longitudinal Valley plain. The time of inspection was in autumn and the cold wave was coming.
The green hills and valleys on both sides of the valley are covered with red leaves, reflecting the morning sun, like fire, and are particularly dazzling.
She quickly discerned that on the 500-meter-high mountain vegetation map, there are a large number of deciduous broad-leaved forest belts. Among them, maple and liquidambar are the most important red-leaf trees. In addition, there are Taiwan beech, Taiwan lattice, and coptis.
When the weather gets cold at the end of autumn and winter, the leaves of these trees show different shades of red, such as translucent red, dark red, and orange-red.
"It's so beautiful! You can draw it well too!" Sonia said sincerely, "I can't draw it."
"It's nothing," Valentina pretended not to care, but she was very happy in her heart. "The scenery is indeed beautiful, but it's a barbaric place! It would be great if there were no savages and malaria."
"Neither barbarians nor malaria are opponents of the Senate." Sonia said, and was attracted by the next group of paintings. This group was a scene on the foothills. The scenery also included an indigenous village. She read the description
: The alluvial fan of Hongye River at the eastern foot of Beinan Main Mountain in the Central Mountain Range of Taiwan Island. The fan surface of the alluvial fan has been cut due to the relationship between flowing water and terrain movement, forming uneven river terraces, similar to the valley landform. The surrounding mountains and ridges are overgrown
There are green maples and green bamboos, and the green water surrounds the green mountains, and the scenery is pleasant.
After reading all the pictures, Sonia put the heavy picture album on the information shelf - next she had to write relevant natural history descriptions for the picture album. But there was no rush for this work, she had to put it in a row at the back.
"Have all the collected animals been delivered?"
"Everything has arrived - it stinks!" She pinched her nose, "It smells like rotting meat. I doubt you can use it as a specimen."
"All rotten?"
"Those skins are fine, but I don't think much of the whole animal. It stinks!"
"Where is everything now?"
"In the basement, kept on ice."
"Let's talk about it tomorrow." Sonia looked at her schedule, "Tomorrow I will take the apprentice to check on the situation."
"It's up to you. I don't want to go anyway... I'll paint after you finish the specimens." Valentina has little interest in natural history. She only paints and works because of her master's orders - she doesn't care about being at home.
Being a "full-time maid". After all, there are so many things that you can enjoy in Lingao. It is so wonderful. It is countless times better than the hut she lived in in Italy.
"Okay, I'll call you when I need you." Sonia said helplessly. In fact, she really hoped that the Italian girl could be with her, so that she could talk, and secondly, it would be better to do some drawing work on the spot.
"Then I'll leave first. There are still many paintings to be painted." Valentina stretched, "It would be great if I could have a small house in such a beautiful place - of course, this is something Australians can't do."
Conquered the place."
After saying that, she remembered something and took out a leather notebook from her bag.
"This is what Chief Cui asked me to give to you. It is the Hualien inspection notes. He said you will definitely be interested."
"Great!" Sonia became excited and took it immediately, "Please tell him: Thank you very much for his hospitality!"
After sending Valentina away, Sonia took out an "English-Chinese Dictionary" compiled by the Great Library from the drawer and couldn't wait to open her notebook. She already had a certain level of Chinese reading ability and could read relatively simple articles.
.But when reading long articles, you still need to use a dictionary to understand the complete meaning.
"...The Taitung Rift Valley Plain is located in the eastern part of Taiwan Island, between the Central Mountains and the Coast Mountains. It starts from Hualien in the north and reaches Taitung in the south, so it is also called the Huadong Rift Valley Plain. It is 180 kilometers long from north to south and 2 to 7 kilometers wide from east to west.
km, with an area of about 1,000 square kilometers and an altitude of 50-250 meters. Among them, the northern and southern ends of the longitudinal valley each have the Hualien Plain and the Taitung Delta Plain with an area of about 80 square kilometers. There is an important port on the east coast - Hualien Port
, located on the east side of the Hualien Plain, with 121.17 degrees east longitude and 23.08 degrees north latitude, it is an important transportation channel for the entire Taitung Rift Valley and the only transportation channel for communicating with the outside world.
"The Taitung Longitudinal Valley is a fault valley with steep mountains on both sides and a long and narrow plain in the shape of a belt. It is also called a "flood plain" due to the influence of sediment discharged from the mountains on both sides. Its geological origin is in the center of Taiwan
The mountains and the Eurasian continental plate to the west, the Coastal Mountains and the Pacific plate to the east were formed when they collided 10 million years ago. Afterwards, they were continuously washed and silted by rivers on both sides of the longitudinal valley, forming what is today.
Longitudinal Valley Plain. Although the plain area is less than 1,000 square kilometers, it is rare in the eastern region of this mountain cluster. It falls like a jade belt between the Central Mountains and the Coastal Mountains, becoming the most fertile area in eastern Taiwan. "