240 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



some large animal, struggling with one another for 

 favourable places, buffeting with their huge wings, 

 and foully besmeared with blood and grease. When 

 so occupied they become quite reckless in their de- 

 vouring greed, and it is often no easy task to drive 

 them away from their feast. In connection with 

 laboratory-work it is sometimes necessary to get rid 

 of large quantities of offal of various kinds, and, in 

 the days when they abounded in Calcutta, adjutants 

 were very useful aids in doing so. The fact that by 

 employing them in this way one was likely to attract 

 them to congregate in the immediate neighbourhood 

 was at that time no objection, as every one was too 

 well used to their presence in the streets to think evil 

 of it. This tolerance, however, was not extended to 

 vultures, and it was sometimes necessary to take 

 violent measures to disperse a throng of them, who 

 had made a sudden descent on a dole intended for 

 the adjutants, and were scuffling over the feast in 

 obscene multitudes, wholly regardless of the showers 

 of brickbats and f other missiles with which their 

 advent was greeted. When hit full in the back by 

 a large brick they might lose their hold and stagger 

 forwards with fluttering wings, but it was only to 

 return at once and resume their places in the con- 

 tending multitude, and it was usually only when the 

 last vestige of the booty had been disposed of that 

 the mob could be prevailed on to disperse. 



They sometimes find it a matter of some difficulty 



