JUNGLE FOLK 



I 



OF INDIAN BIRDS IN GENERAL 



LITERARY critics seem to be agreed that we 

 who write about Indian birds form a 

 J definite school. ** Phil Robinson," they say, 

 "^ " furnished, thirty years ago, a charming 

 model which all who have followed him in writing seem 

 compelled to copy more or less closely." Mr. W. H. 

 Hudson remarks : " We grow used to look for funny 

 books about animals from India, just as we look for 

 sentimental natural history books from America." 



In a sense this criticism is well founded. Popular 

 books on Indian ornithology resemble one another in 

 that a ripple of humour runs through each. But the 

 critics err when they attempt to explain this similarity 

 by asserting that Anglo-Indian writers model them- 

 selves, consciously or imconsciously, on Phil Robinson, 

 or that they imitate one another. The mistake made 

 by the critics is excusable. When each successive 

 writer discourses in the same peculiar style the obvious 

 inference is that the later ones are guilty of more or less 



