CROWS 49 



that are sickly, and especially on any that may be 

 suffering from skin diseases or cutaneous wounds. 

 Even where they inflict no serious injuries they 

 constantly worry and annoy animals to such an 

 extent as to give rise to a degree of nervous irrita- 

 tion that must seriously affect their well-being. 

 Even the stolid indifference of a ruminant cow is 

 not always proof against the attentions of one or 

 two crows as they go hopping and cawing about 

 over her body, pickaxing in her back, mining in 

 her ears and nose, and now and then giving a 

 dangerous dig at one of her eyes. 



Hardly any living things seem to be permanently 

 exempt from their annoyance ; even in places where 

 particular animals have every right to be, and crows 

 are pure intruders, any casual encounter is almost 

 certain to expose the former to insult if not to 

 actual injury. One would have thought that river- 

 tortoises might have escaped, but even they are 

 sometimes as hardly tried as other less protected 

 animals are. I once had an excellent occasion of 

 observing this during the course of one of many 

 golden forenoons spent in "wise passiveness," in a 

 kiosk at a corner of the river-face of the lower 

 platform of the Taj. The Jamna was just begin- 

 ning to fall after the end of the rains, and large 

 banks of yellow sand were forming islands in its 

 shining stream. One of these lay immediately 

 beneath the bank of the Taj Garden, and numbers 



D 



