Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 35 



cleaned and freed from the macerated vegetable matter which 

 clung to them. These pebbles were mostly quartz (amorphous 

 and crystalline), greenstone, and some kind of porphyritic rock; 

 the largest scarcely exceeded in size an ordinary pea, while the 

 majority were not bigger than large pins'-heads. Perhaps, in 

 the hands of some abler mineralogist than myself, these tiny 

 fragments (of which I have a small bag full) may prove to con- 

 tain as yet unnoticed mineral forms from Central Asia, 



I have found similar pebbles in the stomachs of the Grey and 

 Demoiselle Cranes, but never in anything like such numbers as 

 in those of the present species. 



When not alarmed, the White Crane's note is what, for so 

 large a bird, may be called a mere chirrup ; and even when most 

 alarmed, and circling and soaring wildly round and round, 

 looking down upon the capture of wounded offspring or partner, 

 their cry (a mere repetition of the syllables " Karekhur ") is very 

 feeble as compared with that of any other of the Cranes (in- 

 cluding even Balearica pavonina) whose notes I have myself ever 

 heard. 



An examination of the trachea of a fine male that I dissected 

 on the 22nd of February, this year (1867), at once explained 

 this feebleness. Instead of a convolution entering and running 

 far back into the sternum, there is merely a somewhat dilated bend 

 just where the windpipe enters the cavity of the body ; and it is 

 only after the pipe has divided, which it does symmetrically into 

 two very nearly equal tubes, about 3 inches before entering the 

 lungs, that the rings are at all strongly marked, or that the tube 

 impresses one as at all powerful. 



I have already noticed that it is not easy to get at these birds 

 (possibly due in part to a keen sense of hearing accompanying 

 their large ear-orifices) ; and, as far as my experience goes, there 

 is only one way of shooting them with a shot-gun. With a rifle 

 it is not difficult to get within two-hundred-and-fifty to three- 

 hundred yai'ds of them, at which distance, with a heavy "442 

 match rifie, one ought to knock them over every time. The 

 melancholy fact, however, is, that habitually one only succeeds 

 in missing them and thoroughly scaring them with a rifle ; so 

 nothing remains but to have recourse to a long single eight- 



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