230 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



General Habits. — The favourite haunts of the Florican are thus 

 well described by Hodgson, who says : — 



' Tarai is an Indian term equivalent to Pays Bas, Landes, 

 Marches and Marshes, of European tongues ; and the name Tarai 

 is applied, par excellence, to a low-lying moist and rarely-redeemed 

 tract of level waste, extending outside the Sal forest along the base 

 of the sub-Himalayas from the debouch of the Ganges to the 

 Brahmapootra. This tract of great extent and pecular features is 

 the favourite habitat of the Florican, which avoids tlie mountains 

 entirely, and almost, if not quite as entirely, the arid and cultivated 

 plains of the Doab, and of the provinces west of the Jumna. It 

 dwells indeed, upon plains exclusively, but never upon nude or 

 cultivated plains. Shelter of nature's furnishing is indispensable to 

 it, and it solely inhabits wide-spreading plains, sufficiently elevated 

 to be free from inundation, and sufficiently moist to yield a pretty 

 copious crop of grasses, but grasses not so thick nor so high as to 

 impede the movements or vision of a well-sized bird that is ever 

 afoot and always sharply on the look-out. Such extensive, well-clad, 

 yet uncultivated plains are, however, to be found only on the left 

 bank of the Ganges, and accordingly I believe that to that bank the 

 Florican is nearly confined, and to the Tarai portion thereof." 



I am afraid, however, that since Hodgson's days the Florican 

 has become less wise, for he nowadays often haunts grass-land that 

 is liable to inundation, and indeed, throughout the cold weather, he 

 is found on the plains bordering the rivers and on the islands in 

 them, although during the rains these may form one vast sheet of 

 water with the river itself. 



The Florican prefers to frequent plains which are covered with 

 thin grass, or thin grass combined with scattered scrub-Jungle, and 

 much affects those tracts on which village buffalo feed and in which 

 the grass is eaten down to some eighteen inches or two feet, with 

 here and there patches of higher grass, and others, again, bare 

 altogether. In the same way it haunts the plains of ekra and grass 

 after these have been burnt and the fresh crop has grown up to a 

 foot or so, but is still much mixed with the burnt and withered stems 

 of the previous year's growth. It is only in the height of the rains 

 and when no other cover is available for it that it will ever be 

 found in the dense grass and ekra, which at these times may grow 

 to a height of fifteen feet, nor will it even then be obtained in such 



