300 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



otherwise adapted in all respscts to their tastes and 

 habits. 



I have never seen a wood-snipe in Bengal, Behar, Orissa, 

 or Chotah Nagpoor, but have done so in Assam, and one 

 day bagged six in that province, while in quest of sambur, 

 with the help of a friend. These birds were flushed out of 

 a marsh surrounded by trees and bushes, all rising within the 

 space of three or four acres, and were shot without a miss, their 

 flight being heavy and laboured, much resembling that of a 

 woodcock, for which bird my friend mistook the first which 

 rose before us. The wood-snipe is a fine bird, half as large 

 and heavy again as the common snipe. I have met with 

 it too in Sylhet, 011 ground similar to that above described, 

 and believe it may be found in Cachar and Chittagong. 



The woodcock is very rarely seen in the plains. I 

 once flushed one in Cachar, when on the tracks of a tiger 

 in some tall reeds, and another in Sibsagur, when in pursuit 

 of a wounded bull buffalo. This bird is not uncommon on the 

 Khassia Hills, and one may be picked up now and then in 

 Ohittagong. Although against my own experience, I am 

 disposed to believe that it may be found on rare occasions 

 at the base of the Himalayas, and on the high plateaux of 

 Hazaribagh and Lohaduggah. 



There is a sort of sportsman about Calcutta who, unable 

 or unwilling to look up the snipe for himself, keeps in his 

 pay one or more natives, whose duty it is to discover the 

 places where the birds lie thickly, and then to lead their 

 employer to them before they are found and shot over by 

 others. These natives dub themselves " Shikarees," but they 

 are nothing of the sort, being generally village loafers, with 

 a preference for a comparatively idle life on good pay, over 

 regular work on ordinary wages ; some may be bird-netters ; 

 a few may even shoot for the Calcutta market ; but to the 

 respectable title of " Shikaree " they have no right whatever 

 in its higher and proper sense. I have been told that these 

 fellows receive from their employers as much as a rupee for 

 every ten or a dozen birds flushed, in addition to some fixed 



