NETTION CREfCA CHECCA -209 



to eat, indeed, that they are often kept in tealeries in western and 

 northern India, so as to be available during the hot weather and 

 rains. I have no personal knowledge of such tealeries, and, as 

 Hume's account of what they should be is about as full and good a 

 one as it is possible to have, I must again indent on that much-quoted 

 author. He says : — 



" Fresh water, and plenty of it, is the first requisite, and, to 

 ensure this the Tealevy should always be located near the well, and 

 every di'op of water drawn thence for irrigating the garden made to 

 pass through it. The site should be, if possible, under some large 

 umbrageous trees, such as we so commonly find near garden wells, 

 and to the east of the trunk, so that the building may be completely 

 protected from the noontide and afternoon sun. You first make a 

 shallow masonry tank ; twelve feet by eight and ten inches in depth 

 is amply large. Four feet distant from this all round you build a 

 thick mud wall to a height of three feet from the interior. The 

 whole interior surface of this wall and the flat space between it and 

 the tank must be lined with pukka masonry and finished off with 

 well-worked chunam. The great points to be aimed at are to have 

 the whole lower parts so finished off as to be on the one band 

 impregnable to rats, ichneumons, and snakes ; on the other, to 

 present no crevice in which dirt, ticks, and other insects can lurk. 

 Outside the walls must be quite smooth, so that no snakes can crawl 

 up them. On the wall you build stout square pillars, four feet high, 

 on which you place a thick pent thatched roof. At the spring of the 

 roof you stretch inside a thin, rather loose ceiling-cloth, to prevent 

 the birds hurting their heads when they start up suddenly, as they 

 will at first, on any alarm, and especially when the sweeper goes in 

 to wash out the place. The interspaces between the pillars you fill 

 in with well-made cross-work (.Taffri) of split bamboo, except one of 

 them, in which you place a door of similar work made with slips 

 of wood. You must arrange that all the water both enters and 

 leaves the building through gratings impervious to snakes and like 

 marauders. Two or three feet outside the walls run a little groove, 

 a ditchlet, in which plant early in the year mulberry cuttings, which 

 will form a good hedge round the place and keep the sun and hot 

 winds off the building ; but this must be kept neatly trimmed inside, 

 or it would interfere with ventilation, and must not be allowed to 

 get higher than the eaves. 



" Into such a building in February or March you may turn 200 

 Teal, some Common, some Garganey, as you can get them. A few 

 Gadwall and Pin-Tail will also do no barm, but they do not thrive so 

 certainly as the Teal ; and the Garganey, though very good, is not 

 equal for the table to its smaller congener." 

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