ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



VERANDA OK A DAK BUNGALOW 

 Horses seeking -belter from the hail. 



rain fell. Finally came a sound as strange as 

 any in the world, the noise of ice falling on 

 flowers and leaves, a mitrailleuse volley of hail 

 such as only the great Himalayas know. 



Lashed by the ice. our horses whinnied with 

 pain and fright, and although wild mountain 

 ponies, crowded close to us beneath tin shelter 

 of the dak. They pushed in out of the down- 

 pour, and while they had been exposed only to 

 the first, rather light, fall, yet their coats were 

 covered with welts as if from blows of finely 

 divided thongs of a whip. 



After fifteen minutes of hail such as we are 

 familiar with in the States, the stones grew 

 larger and the downpour more furious, until the 

 crash of falling ice dominated all other sounds. 

 The floor of the valley became white and the 

 hail-stones — now much larger than marbles — 

 bounced and leaped high after their impact with 

 the ground. I took several photographs which 

 showed this, together with the flattening of the 

 vegetation. 



Leaves and whole fans of spruce needles were 

 torn away and covered the bruised blossoms of 

 the forest slopes. The air was a screen of 

 straight lines, breaking near the ground into a 

 maze of dancing, splintering crystal balls. 



Before the bombardment 

 ended I put out my hand, 

 with the result that one stone 

 struck my thumb and lamed 

 it for three days. Without 

 warning, the sun came out 

 and made of the storm a 

 translucent tapestry, 

 through which the broken 

 foliage was dimly visible. It 

 was so wonderful, so unlike 

 anything I had ever seen. 

 that I forgot momentarily 

 the terrible damage — the 

 shredded foliage, the host of 

 stricken nestlings and crea- 

 tures which had not found a 

 safe retreat. When the last 

 missile had fallen I won- 

 dered whether the most 

 hardy tenant of the forest 

 had survived. And nature 

 in mockery of my ignorance, 

 having ceased her cruel tor- 

 rent, sent out the frailest of 

 frail butterflies, flickering its 

 copper wings before me in 

 the sun. 



I found others which had 

 not been so fortunate, and 

 in one spot, beneath a thin-leaved bush were 

 thirty-eight good-sized butterflies, with wings 

 only slightly torn, but all killed and partly 

 buried beneath a mass of jellied hail-stones. 

 About fifty percent of the nests which I had un- 

 der observation were destroyed, but some were 

 preserved by overhanging banks. This was the 





VOLNG TITMOUSE 

 r of the brood killed by the hail. 



