16 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



fair for four months or thereabouts, with perhaps one small 

 break about Christmas time. The temperature, still high at 

 mid-day, is cool and agreeable at other hours. Snipe have 

 changed their ground ; many rice-fields being quite dry and 

 the crops coming into ear, they have moved to lower lands, 

 and to the borders of lakes and marshes. The snipe-shooter 

 must now be cautious to avoid drying fields of ripening grain, 

 lest the loud curses of the frantic husbandman fall upon his 

 offending head. Partridges have become proverbially plump ; 

 plover have increased greatly ; teal are plentiful in their ordi- 

 nary resorts ; ducks, geese, and cranes still direct their flights 

 southwards to the seashore, to the sand and mud banks at 

 the mouths of the great rivers, and to the " Chilka," or salt- 

 water lake in the Pooree district. Water-fowl of all kinds 

 cranes, herons, and storks ; the ibis, the bittern, the marabout 

 crane, the stately jabirn, in evening-dress and white waistcoat, 

 the " coolen " or " koolang " (grus cimeria) ; the adjutant, slow 

 and solemn, a cross between a head- waiter and a member of 

 council on stilts ; waders in varieties innumerable, from the 

 tiniest to the greatest, have all returned to the winter haunts, 

 and may be found there in great numbers, particularly on the 

 low-lying lands about the mouths of the Megna, the Damra, 

 the Mahanuddy, and other queens of rivers in Bengal and 

 Orissa. 



With the advent of December " the cold season " has well 

 set in ; in Bengal with chilly mornings and evenings, bright 

 cool days, and damp cold nights ; in Behar and Chota Nag- 

 poor the air is much colder and drier, and fires are now a 

 comfortable necessity. All the game of the country is in good 

 condition and abundant ; pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, partridge, and 

 spur-fowl have fattened on the grain picked up in fields 

 cleared of crops ; ducks and geese frequent early and late 

 these same fields, where they may be shot in the fog or haze 

 of early morning by the cautious sportsman, whose gun will 

 carry straight and kill at. seventy and eighty yards ; for at 

 these times while feeding they are extremely wary, as indeed 

 they always are, except perhaps at high-noon, when they 



