本文的聚焦人物Robert Swinhoe（1836－1877），是一位著名的博物學家。他台灣居住數年期間，經由他命名或因他採集記錄發表的物種名錄，達千種之多。1856年Swinhoe首度來臺，1858年環航臺灣，主要任務是搜尋1848年Kelpie號在基隆船難的兩位船員。這一趟政治目地的探險活動，還兼具了解臺灣風土民情、海岸、港口，及勘查礦產情形。他將這一次航行所見所思，發表於英國皇家亞洲學會（Royal Asiatic Society）北華上海分會，名為＜Narrative of a visit to the island of Formosa＞。本文即以Swinhoe此趟22天的旅行遊記，作為分析的重要社會文本。本文探討了Swinhoe旅遊筆記文本之世界經濟體系背景，及他為何知識化台灣（海外探險家與「科學」分類），另外，亦探討Swinhoe背後之西方科學知識及博物之自然史知識體系構建。再者，在上面論述基礎，進入文本，探討Swinhoe如何細膩地「觀看」十九世紀中業的台灣社會人文風貌，尤其是針對台灣原住民族。最後，省思Swinhoe的十九世紀中葉台灣族群互動圖像觀察與記述之社會意義。

This article focuses on Robert Swinhoe (1836-1877) who was a well-known naturalist. During the several years when he lived in Taiwan, he had named or collected, recorded and published more than one thousand of species. In 1856, Swinhoe made his first visit to Taiwan. In 1858, he went on a trip around Taiwan for the purpose of searching for two sailors of Kelpie who had been shipwrecked outside Keelung in 1848. This political expedition also provided an opportunity to understand Taiwan's peoples and cultures, seacoasts and ports and investigate the mineral resources. He wrote down what he had observed and thought about this trip and published it as 'Narrative of a visit to the island of Formosa' in the North China Shanghai Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The travel notes of 22 days written by Swinhoe are analyzed by this study as being a social text. This article studies the background of economic system in the world demonstrated in Swinhoe's travel notes and the reasons why he constructed the knowledge about Taiwan (overseas explorer and ”scientific” classification). Besides, it also studies the construction of the Western scientific knowledge and the system of natural history knowledge in Swinhoe's time. Then, as to the theme, this article studies how carefully Swinhoe 'had observed' Taiwan's humanities and social and natural states in the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, this article reflects on the social construction of the image of the interaction between ethnic groups in Taiwan in the mid-nineteenth century. The writing way of this article gives some narrations and inserts some discussions at the same time. The text tries to use sociology of knowledge to analyze Swinhoe's construction of natural history knowledge and discuss the social and cultural implications demonstrated in the article written by him in 1858.