Sucklers — Birds. 9649 



Kids suckled by a Bilch.— Last year, when the troops left this station to proceed to 

 the frontier war, a goat belonging: to an officer had two young kids the very morning 

 the force marched. The cruel native servants, who have less feeling than any animal, 

 even a tiger, took with them the poor mother and left tlie two kids behind, because to 

 cany them would have entailed a little trouble, a thing most devoutly abhorred by 

 this class of menials. The liitle kids made a terrible bleating noise at being left all 

 alone; and a pariah dog, who was employed as a wet nurse, in the opposite compound, 

 for iwo En>;lish puppies, came over the road and took the helpless little kids in her 

 nioulh, and conveyed them into the box where her two puppies were: after this she 

 regularly suckled ibem, and brought them up with the other two of her adopted 

 family. It was a curious sight, the old lady suckling two puppies and two kids; she 

 laid down to the former, but had to stand up for the latter; they used to run at her in 

 the usual vehement way lambs and kids do at their mothers, which often gave the dog 

 great pain ; but, noiwiihsianding this, she was never known to bite at them. These 

 two kids grew up and followed the dog about, along with the two puppies all day, 

 until the kids became as big as the old dog herself: she nursed them for about Unee 

 months, when she had a family of her own, and left off taking any notice of tliera 

 further than by a good-humoured wag of the tail or an occasional lick of their faces. 

 These kids grew up to be big goats, and continued playing with the dogs, their foster- 

 brother and sister. The old dog had been, in the first place, deprived of her own off- 

 spring, and the two puppies had been brought to her to bring up. Perhaps having 

 jost her own family made her take compassion on the kids, thus showing that 

 "A kindred feeling makes us wondrous kind" does not apply to the human race alone. 

 — T. P. Norgale; Sealkote, January, 1865. 



Notes on the Indian Crow. By Major Norgate. 



This bird may be considered as the scamp among his feathered 

 brethren. He is the most impudent, impertinent, inquisitive, loqua- 

 cious, bullying, and annoying bird perliaps known. With his habits 

 all residents in India must, in spite of themselves, be tolerably con- 

 versant, for the crow comes into your house, flies away with an egg off 

 the breakfast table, sticks his beak into the butter pot, steals the 

 sugar, &c: he gets into a great funk if you chance to come into the 

 room, and catch him at it, and generally knocks down something off 

 the table in his hurry to fly away. His inquisitiveness is unequalled. 

 You cannot leave your house, walk in your garden, dig up a sod of 

 earth, sow a single seed, or sit down anywhere for two minutes without 

 this bird coming to see what you may be doing. He watches the dog, 

 when it hides a bone or piece of meat, and quickly disinlers it. The 

 crow is so sharp, that one of them seldom gets anything to eat, with- 

 out all his dusky companions in the compound knowing it, and a 

 system of robbing immediately lakes place, one bird seizes the bone, 

 VOL. XXIII. 2 M 



