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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Sunday, October 10, 2010

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A FEW HONG KONG SNIPPETS AND A FLOATING BOTTLE

Friends, this is a Muirhead`s Mysteries Extra dedicated to Jon and Corinna`s memory of Biggles.

I`ve found a few interesting Hong Kong items over the last week or so in addition to what I found in Oxford last weekend.

There is a mention of a “black monkey” as a pet in S. Bard`s `Voices From the Past. Hong Kong 1842-1918 (1) but unfortunately I didn`t make a note of the exact date but I`m pretty sure it was around the time of World War 1. As far as I know there have never been any all black monkeys in Hong Kong. Anyone know about this?

The Hong Kong Telegraph of March 23rd 1911(2) reported porpoises in Hong Kong harbour whilst the same newspaper of May 13th 1914 (3) covered the story of a 23ft whale in Tolo Harbour. Tolo Harbour is on the eastern side of the New Territories.

And now this completely different story I found in The China Mail of December 16th 1931:

THE SEA GIVES UP A JOKE

Year-Old Message In A 30-Year-Old Bottle

“After being in the sea for thirty years, and perhaps embedded for long periods in ice, a bottle dropped Overboard by the Baldwin-Ziegler Polar expedition (which returned to Norway in 1902), has been found at Aith, Shetland Islands.”

This is the opening chapter of a little romance of the sea that went wrong, for later news shows that Shetland got excited too soon. The bottle, true enough, had originally to the expedition of thirty years ago, but when opened it was found to contain a message from a Danish expedition sent to East Greenland last year.

This expedition has apparently been using drift bottles made for the explorers of thirty years ago.(4)

1 S.Bard Voices from the Past Hong Kong 1842-1918 Hong Kong University Press 2002
2 S. Bard Ibid p.259
3 Ibid p.310
4 The China Mail Dec. 16th 1931 p.9

U2 A SORT OF HOMECOMING

And you know its time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape…
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