22 JUNGLE FOLK 



other city or town I have ever visited. They are nearly 

 as abundant as the crows ; further, that beautiful bird, 

 commonly known as Pharaoh's chicken (Neophron 

 percnopterus) , shows his smiling face to one at every 

 turn. Let me here observe that I am not calHng anyone 

 names ; I am merely stating a fact. If the Lahore 

 municipal authorities take my words to heart, so much 

 the better ! 



Kites are the assistant sweepers to Government ; I 

 was going to say " honorary sweepers," but that 

 would not have been strictly accurate, for in India 

 nothing is done for nothing. The kites receive no 

 money wages, nothing that comes under the 

 Accountant-General's audit, but they are paid in truck. 

 They are allowed to keep the refuse they clear away. 

 This seems on the face of it to be a bandohast most 

 favourable to the Government, a very cheap way of 

 securing servants ; but, like many another arrange- 

 ment which reads well on paper, it is in practice not 

 so advantageous as it appears. Thus the kite is 

 apt to put a wide, I might almost say an elastic 

 interpretation on the word *' refuse." To take a 

 concrete example : the other day one of these 

 birds swooped down and carried off the chop that 

 was to have formed the piece de resistance of my 

 breakfast. 



But, notwithstanding his many misdeeds, the kite is a 

 bird with which we in India could ill afford to dispense, 

 for he subsists chiefly upon garbage. Fortified with 

 this knowledge, we are able to properly appreciate the 

 sublime lines of the poet Hurdis : 



