MISCELLANEOUS. 



lo3 



fiercely. I retired, and after taking counsel with the captain of my, guard, made a 

 torch of straw and patiently smoked them to death all along the rope. Tlien I 

 attacked the root of the tree where they were thickest, and left nothing but a black 

 waste. Half an hour later fresh myriads were carrying off the charred remains of 

 their comrades. They took them up the tree towards their nest, whether for food 

 or burial rites I cannot say. It was now getting dark, so I gave up my enterprise; 

 but before going to bed I brought out a lantern and found them calmly passing 

 up and down my tent ropes as before. I had done everything I could short of 

 burning down my tent, and they remained masters of the field. 



It. may interest members of the Anthropological Society to know that the 

 jungle people in the Canara District eat the red ant. They take down the whole 

 nest, and pounding ants and larvae together, make them into curry. The blood, 

 or juice, of the red ant is, as might be expected, intensely acrid, and it is said that 

 the fumes which rise from them as they are being pounded make the eyes of the 

 operator smart, so what the sensation of eating them must be is scarcely think- 

 able. It must be like a torchlight procession going down one's throat. 



MEMORANDA. 

 By IT. Littledale, Baroda. 



Malformed Sambur Horn- — I am sendingfor exhibition at the next meeting of the 

 Society a sambur-horn — or perhaps a pair of horns joined together — that I have 

 picked up in the jungles east of Surat. These horns seem to have dropped 

 naturally from the head. They are the strangest looking pair I have ever seen, 

 and seen different from any yet figured in the Journal. 



The Ami or Arm {Wild Buffalo).— The Arna or Wild Buffalo and the Gaur, or 

 Indian Bison, do not inhabit the same jungles as a rule, and to the minds of the 

 natives there can be no difference worth considering between them. Hence I 

 ask is the name Arna or Ami the same word as Rani, the Bheel name for the 

 bison being Rana paro or Rani Bhains, that is, Forest Buffalo ? For Rani of 

 Matheran. Then Ami Bhainsa and Rani Bhains would be the same name 

 applied to different animals {Bos ami and Bos gavaeus). Such instances of 

 confusion are common in Indian nomenclature. 



The metathesis ar and ra is common too. One instance occurs to me : in Kash- 

 mir the natives call a tree darkhat, whereas the correct form is darakht I believe. 

 The derivation of Arna from the Skt. Array ak seems less probable than this 

 conjecture. 



The Great Indian Flying Squirrel. — I find that this animal is nocturnal in its 

 flights. Last full moon, I was sitting up in the jungle, and one of these squirrels 

 glided from tree to tree near me. It mounted with curious loopings of its body 

 (as some caterpillars climb) from the very foot to the highest spray of a Kadai 

 tree, then launched itself in a curving glide towards the next tree, rising a little 

 when about three yards from it, and taking the trunk about three feet from the 

 ground : the length of flight from GO to 80 feet, I should say. 



Bear killed by Tiger. — I was after a bear for some day r s in May, but it was 

 missing from its accustomed haunts. At last we found it, or rather its claws, 

 and a few bones, in a tiger's cave. It was a big bear, with claws qtute 3 inches 

 outside curve, but the tiger had certainly shikarred it, and eaten every bit of it! 



