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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



No. I— LATE STAY OF SNIPE. 



It seems to me exceptionally late for snipe to stay so far south as this in April, 

 but on the 7th April I saw 12 snipe in the rice fields here and shot three. On the 

 12th I saw seven and shot one, and on the 20th I flushed one from under a bush, 

 and though I searched high and low for its nest I was not successful in finding it. 



I am informed that it is not unheard of for snipe to stay all the year through 

 in Kanara, but I do not know if this is so. 



C. D. LESTER, Captain. 



Camp Anmod, Castle Rock, N. Kanaka, 

 2Qth April, 1903. 



[This note raises an interesting point which it is hoped our members will con- 

 tinue to develope, namely, the dates of arrival and departure each year of the 

 migratory birds — not only the migratory game birds which go to Central Asia 

 and Siberia for breeding purposes, but all birds which migrate in this country, 

 even from the plains to the hills, and other local migrations. — Ed.] 



No. II— A PANTHER EXPERIENCE. 



There had been many people eaten by panthers in the taluka during the past 

 monsoon. The grass was high everywhere, and the cultivated fields were little 

 belter than weed-gardens ; the houses of the villagers were amongst the fields, 

 separated one from the other by, generally a hundred yards or so, and made of 

 grass as to walls, roof and door. A panther would come along, sneaking quietly 

 up to a house in the darkness of the night, listen (I presume) for a sleeping per- 

 son in a convenient position on the floor inside, make a parting in the grass wall? 

 seize the individual by the throat, and be off into the high, dense grass before 

 any one was well awake ; sometimes, I believe, no one did wake. A boy was 

 carried off from amongst three men, all four watching a field, from a threshing 

 floor (a circular cleared bit of ground, generally at the side of the field near or 

 under a large tree in this part of the world). The panther came first at dusk : 

 the men saw it put its head out of the grass close by : they of course shouted 

 and the panther disappeared. After they were all asleep, however, it came 

 back, sneaked up, seized the boy by the throat (the men say, there was no noise 

 or cry), and went off with him to a distance of a quarter of a mile or so, where 

 it ate half of him, and was traced next morning by the three men through the 

 grass ; but of course there was no panther when they got there ; only the grue- 

 some remains of the boy. In seven cases of such deaths there was not a 

 single beast brought to book. Sometimes men sleep in platforms in trees, though 

 I have not heard of any one being taken out of such a place by a panther. This 

 is a prelude to my story. 



I had been tying up goats for some time in every likely spot I could think of 

 with little result ; one or two of them were killed by hyaenas. At last a 

 panther killed one and I had bamlobast made for sitting up over the carcase, or 

 what remained of it, in the evening. The bamlobast consisted of a platform 

 placed in a mowra tree, twenty feet from the ground and some twenty yards 



