THE BORI FOREST 303 



flocks of the common large green paroquet* {Ma), 21 inches 

 long, and the smaller rose-collared tota, which roosts with 

 the crows, and many kinds of plum-headed paroquets, and 

 slaty-headed and red-breasted parrots of all sizes. Their 

 noisy fit, luckily, does not go on for very long ; but when 

 it ceases, then begin the various evening and night 

 noises which are more or less ventriloquistic sounds, 

 hard to imitate or describe. There are notes of various 

 owls, some plaintive, some snoring ; the purring also of 

 the goatsuckers which fly round with noiseless flight, their 

 great throats open wide to swallow large moths and insects. 

 Stag-beetles drone as they swing by, and cockchafers 

 and the cicadas in the trees keep up a creaking which 

 seems always in the air, and there is never silence. 



These are the voices of the jungle, which speak to those 

 who listen and try to understand something of the teeming 

 life which Indian forests present. Each inhabitant talks 

 to his own kindred, and uses a language well understood 

 among friends, and gives warning of enemies. Each 

 of the many thousand species in the list has its own place 

 of abode for the season, and in its mind owns the land, 

 and the feeding grounds, and drinking fountains, and 

 night perches, and the nests which it builds, just as much 

 as men own land and houses and bequeath them to their 

 successors. Each group of migratory birds has its own 

 summer and winter demesne, and takes its trip to the 

 seaside or continent as regularly as clockwork, returning 

 on the same date each year to its own fixed residence, in 

 localities separated often by immense distances, some- 

 times in different hemispheres. Each builds in its own 

 style of architecture according to correct and fixed laws. 

 Who can say what is the extent of mind or intelligence 

 possessed by these creatures ? That they have clever- 



* Palaornis nipalensis. 



