312 Mr. J. D. de La louche ow 



through it, the grass cutting my hands severely. At last 

 we managed to get out into the open and climb up the side 

 of the hill. There the cover (chiefly grass), though thick, 

 was low, and quantities of small birds were disporting them- 

 selves out of reach, and generally out of sight too. They 

 appeared to be Warblers of all sorts and Munias. I distin- 

 guished among the latter several M. formosana ; but they 

 soon flew down the hill and hid in the jungle. Wandering 

 on, I came suddenly on a covey of Partridges sunning 

 themselves near a small patch of rice. They were, I believe, 

 the Bambusicola sonorivox. High up on the hill some Doves 

 were cooing, the deep " co6-co6-ro5-c66-c66 " being that of 

 the Turtur rupicola. These Doves keep generally to the 

 higher parts of the hills, where, perched on some solitary 

 tree, they call to each other all day long. I now found 

 myself in a ravine at the foot of the range, with high sword- 

 grass jungle all round me. Several birds were calling, and 

 I recognized the whistle of some large PomatorMni. There 

 were two, calling to each other, both of them invisible. 

 The call, a deep melodious whistle, might be written " tiot- 

 tiot-tio^^; it was varied at times by another trisyllabic call, 

 which, unfortunately, I did not take note of at the time. I 

 waited in vain for these birds to show themselves, but, scent- 

 ing danger, they kept well concealed. One of them, how- 

 ever, appeared twice, flying up to perch on a grass-stalk, but 

 diving down again before I could put up my gun. It was a 

 Pomatorhiniis erythrocnemis. Another bird of the same 

 tribe was calling close to me, the cry having almost a human 

 sound, something like "cock-kee," uttered in a shrill loud 

 tone. This place being quite hopeless, I went down the 

 valley towards one of the well-wooded conical hillocks. This 

 hill had a fairly sparse undergrow^th of bushes of various 

 kinds under the trees, and was sufficiently easy walking, but 

 there were few birds about. However, a party of Alcippe 

 brunnea was diligently hunting about under the bushes. 

 They were very tame — too tame, in fact — as it was difficult 

 to get a specimen without blowing it to pieces. The birds 

 shot were, besides, in moult. On reaching the top of the 



