64 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



its highest pitch. You feel you are being stormed, and that you 

 must rely solely on the keenness of your own eye and the steadiness 

 of your pulso. Perhaps, when all is over, you smile at your own 

 excitement : yet many things you may forget before you forget 

 those few moments. Both these birds are amazingly quick on the 

 wing, and almost invariably fly straight downwards ; sometimes 

 indeed a bit too straight. It is as much as you can do sometimes 

 to avoid being knocked down by a bird you have just shot. I have 

 had the shikaree at my side bowled over like a ninepin and rendered 

 considerably foolish in this way. When flushed by dogs alone, both 

 these birds will often at first, especially iu the afternoons, perch on 

 some tree, whence they will keep up their excited cackling for a 

 considerable time. This is the moment of your shikaree's reward ; 

 you give him your gun and he stalks ventre- d-terre (the favourite 

 attitude of the Duke of Wellington, according to the French books 

 of my } r outh) through the trees, and pots the bird on the bough. 

 It is wonderful what eyes these men have for a bird in a tree ; they 

 will often see them in passing without anythiug having occurred to 

 cause them to expect to see a bird there, and it is almost certain 

 that their efforts to make you also see the bird will be altogether 

 unavailing. Many and many a long day spent on their own account 

 with just one cunning little dog and some old "shooting iron' 1 

 is, I fancy, the secret of it. On this topic, however, you will not find 

 your shikaree prepared to be over-confidential. Nearly related 

 to the pheasant is the red-jungle fowl {Qallus ferruginew). If 

 you keep to the higher ground, 5,000 ft. and over, you will not come 

 across this bird; but down in some of the valleys, especially near 

 the rivers (if you are fishing), this bird, I am told, in many places 

 gives good sport. We come now to the partridges. In this family 

 there is one bird at least that deserves most honorable notice. 

 This is the chuker or red-legged partridge (Caccabis chukor), a 

 very near relation of, if not identical with, our friend the 

 " Frenchman " ( Caccabis c/rceca). This bird will test all your powers 

 of walking.all your boasted acciu^acy of shooting, all your endurance, 

 and all your patience. Open, broken ground in the neighbourhood 

 of cultivation is their favourite resort, on which, while still, they 

 are exceedingly hard to see. If they were not such arrant chatterers, 

 they might perhaps have a comparatively great life of it. There 

 must be an awful struggle for "the last word" amongst chukors. I 

 fancy they must sometimes quite welcome the gun as an occasion 



