Ornithological and Other Oddities 



poaching methods, and sent alive to the markets 

 to die slowly of hunger and thirst, for the native 

 never troubles to attend to their wants so long 

 as he can keep them alive without attention for 

 a few days. 



All through the winter this cruelty goes on, and 

 has gone on for years, though my friend Mr. W. 

 S. Burke, the editor of the leading Indian sporting 

 paper, has constantly protested against it. The 

 sight of it always mars the pleasure of a visit to 

 this bazaar, otherwise a most interesting place, by 

 reason of the number of different species of the 

 stilted and web-footed tribes which throng in 

 millions to India in winter, when, as Seebohm 

 picturesquely puts it, the Ice-angel has closed the 

 gates of their paradise on the Siberian tundras. 

 At this time India is perhaps the only country 

 where birds, valued elsewhere for food and sport, 

 may amount to a pest ; the Indian ryot knows as 

 well as the Roman farmer in Virgil's day "what 

 harm is wrought by greedy goose and Strymon's 

 cranes," and the garganey teal, comparatively 

 scarce and scattered in the west, comes in dense 

 multitudes, which break down acres of rice in 

 a night. 



Also come better-known quarry of the English 



wild - fowler, mallard and wigeon, pintail and 



pochard, to meet on the jheels the resident Indian 



water-fowl, the noisy, quarrelsome, whistling tree- 



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