36 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



bore with BB green cartridge. This will easily knock them 

 down up to seventy, or, if a shot tells well in the neck, 

 up to eighty yards ; but getting within eighty or even a 

 hundred yards of them can only be managed, as a general 

 rule, in one way. You obtain from one of the native fowlers 

 the loan of a trained Buffalo, and enter the water a good 

 quarter of a mile away from the birds, under cover of the 

 quadruped. It has, as usual, a string run tightly through the 

 nostrils and tied together behind the horns. You hold this 

 string where it lies across the cheek with the left hand ; your 

 extended left arm is hidden behind the neck ; your whole body 

 is bent, so that your head and neck are covered by the Buffaloes- 

 shoulders, your body and the greater part of your legs by its 

 body. Only your legs to a little above the knees show close to 

 the hind legs ; and as far as possible you always keep the beast 

 up to his belly in water. Thus covered you slowly sidle up to- 

 wards the Cranes, making the buffalo now put his head up, nose 

 in air, now stop and lower his head to the water, and generally 

 dawdle and meander about with apparently no fixed idea in his 

 head, according to the natural manners and customs of a free 

 and independent buffalo. With a little practice it is easy thus 

 to get within shot. You softly let the cheek-string go, and at 

 once fire below the buffalo's neck. Before your gun is well off, 

 your sporting companion — who has a marked distrust of Euro- 

 peans and white faces, and has been incessantly endeavouring to 

 kick you throughout your whole promenade — knocks you head 

 over heels, and rushes off towards his dusky owner, bellowing as 

 if he, and not you, were the injured party. This is firstrate 

 sport ; but, after trying it once or twice, nearly catching my 

 death of cold, losing a powder-flask, and realizing a stock in 

 trade of bruises enough to last the rest of my natural life, I 

 have preferred sitting quietly on the bank and allowing my 

 native coadjutors to shoot the birds I wanted. 



When shot they are worth nothing as food ; which, consider- 

 ing their diet here, is not surprising. 



In Europe, nowadays, the Common Crane is not thought 

 worth eating, and people wonder at our ancestors esteeming 

 them as they did ; but the reason of this is obvious. In former 



