698 Mr. W. Jesse — Additions 



labours are so poor is due to two facts. In the first place^ 

 owing to a severe touch of sunstroke, I have been compelled to 

 restrict my wanderings more or less to the early mornings and 

 the evenings ; and, in the second place, beyond a bicycle, I 

 have nothing save my feet as a means of locomotion. To do 

 good work upon the larger birds of prey it is necessarj^ to 

 have a horse and to ride over wide tracts of country, scanning 

 the most likely trees and marking any nests that may be 

 seen. I have been singularly unlucky with such species. 

 Thus I have only once got an egg of the Indian Tawny Eagle 

 {Aquila vindhiana) — and that was rotten, — though I must 

 have found ten or a dozen nests empty or with young. 

 Curiously, just beneath the egg, in the underside of this 

 nest, a family of Chirukas [Uroloncha malaharica) had taken 

 up their abode. Similarly, I have not yet succeeded in ob- 

 taining an egg of the Black Vulture {Otogyps calvus), though 

 I have visited several breeding-places at different times. 



The long distances to be covered before reaching the bigger 

 jheels have prevented me from thoroughly searching the 

 neighbourhood for water-birds, but I hope in time to be able 

 to shew that numbers of species nest with us of which the 

 eggs have not yet been taken in this district. 



The little that 1 have done is mainly due to the valuable help 

 which I have received from innumerable pupils in La Mar- 

 tinibre College and to their unceasing energy. Whether it be 

 in his knowledge of the habits of the feathered tribes, born of 

 years of patient watching, or in the skill with which he will 

 track down a bird to its nest, the average Anglo-Indian boy 

 is far in advance of his English cousin. For him no cheap 

 book is obtainable filled with accurate information, and he 

 has to rely upon his own powers of observation, with occa- 

 sional assistance from some friendly ornithologist. Needless 

 to say, what he does know he know^s thoroughly, and, if his 

 nomenclature be not that used by Jerdon or that found in 

 the volumes of the ^ Fauna of British India,^ he is little the 

 worse for that. 



Furthermore, the highest tree, the thinnest branch, has no 

 terrors for the Martiniere lad. The practice of generations 



