56 ANIMALS OF NO IMPORTANCE. 



as a peacock ; he is obviously anxious to stand well in the 

 estimation of man. Here it should be stated in the words of 

 the framers of the Indian Penal Code, that in what follows, 

 " the pronoun 'he ' and its derivatives are used either of 

 male or female ; " I was almost saying " the greater in- 

 cludes the less," but for obvious reasons I refrain. A myna 

 and his wife are so alike in outward appearance that it is as 

 difficult to distinguish them as to say which of the weird 

 figures found in children's Noah's Arks is intended for Noah 

 and which for his wife. But this is a digression ; as we 

 were saying, the myna is most anxious to stand high in man's 

 estimation. If you are very observant, you may chance to 

 see once in a life-time a bedraggled myna one who might 

 have been making mud-pies ; but no sooner does this dirty 

 but sagacious bird catch sight of you than he stands at 

 attention and is transformed into quite a respectable-looking 

 creature. 



The myna is a noisy bird, and here again one is 

 obliged to join issue with Mr. Robinson, who says it is not, 

 and declares that it " obtests against the chaunting of fool- 

 ish litanies before the idols of his own conceit. " It is true 

 that I have never yet heard a myna sing a litany, but I have 

 heard him emit every sound bar chanting. There seems 

 to be no limit to the range of a myna's notes. Jerdon, of 

 whom one always feels that he, like George Washington, 

 could never tell a lie, so soberly and scientifically written 

 are his books, says : " It has a great variety of notes, some 

 of them pleasing and musical, others harsh ; some have a 

 resonant metallic sound." Perhaps the most pleasing note 

 is that which it utters during flight. Undoubtedly, the 

 harshest notes which the myna utters are sung at bed-time. 



During the winter most of the mynas of our little station 

 roost in a clump of bamboos which grow in the club com- 

 pound. From September until April those bamboos are 

 transformed into miniature Towers of Babel miniature as 

 regards height, but not as regards sound. The hundreds 

 of mynas collected in them have an hour's shouting match 



