A RAMBLE ROUND SIMIA. 369 
“hot corner,” and have five or six down on you more rapidly 
than you can well load. These are moments to live for. The 
joy of battle is yours. Every nerve is braced, every sense strung 
at its highest pitch. You feel you are being stormed, and that 
you must rely solely on the keenness of your own eye and the 
steadiness of your pulse. Perhaps, when all is over, you smile 
at your own excitement: yet many things you may forget before 
you forget these few moments. Both these birds are amazingly 
quick on the wing, and almost invariably fly straight downwards, 
—sometimes, indeed, a bit too straight. It is as much as you 
can do sometimes to avoid being knocked down by a bird you 
have just shot. I have had the shikaree at my side bowled over 
like a ninepin, and rendered considerably foolish in this way. 
When flushed by dogs alone, both these birds will often at first, 
especially in the afternoons, perch on some tree, whence they will 
keep up their excited cackling for a considerable time. This is 
the moment of your shikaree’s reward; you give him your gun 
and he stalks ventre-a-terre (the favourite attitude of the Duke of 
Wellington, according to the French books of my youth) through 
the trees, and “pots” the bird on the bough. It is wonderful what 
eyes these men have for a bird in a tree; they will often see them 
in passing without anything having occurred to cause them to 
expect to see a bird there, and it is almost certain that their 
efforts to make you also see the bird will be altogether unavailing. 
Many and many a long day spent on their own account with just 
one cunning little dog and some old “ shooting iron” is, I fancy, 
the secret of it. On this topic, however, you will not find your 
shikaree prepared to be over confidential. 
Nearly related to the Pheasant is the Red Jungle-fowl, Gallus 
Jerrugineus. If you keep to the higher ground, 5000 feet and 
over, you will not come across this bird; but down in some of 
the valleys, especially near the rivers (if you are fishing), this 
bird, I am told, in many places gives good sport. 
We come now to the partridges. In this family there is one 
bird at least that deserves most honourable notice. This is the 
Chukor or Red-legged Partridge, Caccabis chukor, a very near 
relation of, if not identical with, our friend the ‘“‘ Frenchman,” 
Caccabis rubra. This bird will test all your powers of walking, 
all your boasted accuracy of shooting, all your endurance, and all 
your patience. Open, broken ground in the neighbourhood of 
