INDIA 183 
open in his accustomed way. The hippo closed his jaws over both 
grass and hand and pulled her in. Her screams and the yells of 
the crowd must have excited him, and he turned on the girl and 
killed her against the wall. When I arrived he was quite placid 
but was shut up in an inner compartment. 
“T think it quite possible that hippos in their natural state are 
partially carnivorous and in captivity could probably be induced 
to eat meat and fish.” 
Eventually we managed to arrange to stay at a Forestry Station 
at Siliguri, some twenty-five miles north of Jalpaiguri, the ter- 
minus of the broad-gaged railway. Here we had to transfer to the 
light-gage railway that passes through the Siliguri forests, then 
winds its way up and up to Darjeeling (7,000 feet). 
The country round Siliguri was studded with forest-covered 
hills that stood out like buttresses in the plains, with the enormous 
land mass towering far to the north. 
Through the winding valleys of these hills a beautiful small 
river—the upper reaches of the Mahananda—with its wide sandy 
bed, threaded its way, and this was the home of many Spotted 
Forktails. These birds have black-and-white plumage and a deeply 
forked tail, and resemble large wagtails in appearance and habits, 
but really belong to the thrush tribe. It is a pretty sight to see 
them strutting over sand and stones and through shallow water, 
suddenly speeding up to peck at some small insect, and incessantly 
bobbing their tails. When put to flight they utter a plaintive call 
but rarely fly more than a short distance to settle again in the 
river-bed, and if driven more than a certain distance from their 
favorite haunt they will invariably double back to it. I saw them 
only where forest was bordering mountain streams. 
One of the first things to make my heart beat faster was the 
sight of a Blue-necked Bee-eater—a veritable monster of the 
family, having an overall length of fourteen inches. This bird has 
a large head and lengthy throat hackles of ultramarine blue, but 
is otherwise mainly green. There was a pair perched on the tips 
of the highest branches of a forest giant, from where they occa- 
sionally darted into the air to catch a winged insect, only to return 
to bang it a few times on the branch prior to swallowing it. How 
