4 FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 



Vadi the population is more sparse, being at the rate of about 

 170 to the square mile. 



Aspect. — Reserving- further statistics for the present, I will 

 pass on to the chief physical features of the tract. In de- 

 scribing any country the highest perfection of art is to convince 

 the reader that he, no less than the writer, has been there. 

 This I cannot expect to accomplish. People who have not 

 seen a country often describe it better than those who have. 

 A peripatetic clergyman and preacher for the S. P. G., who 

 had never so much as crossed the British channel, once deli- 

 vered an eloquent lecture on South Africa, in a village school 

 in rural England. After an hour of full and graphic descrip- 

 tions of the scenery, the natives, and their manners and customs, 

 he had fully succeeded in making his simple audience believe 

 he had been a spectator of the scenes he described. Their 

 disappointment was keen when they learnt that the lecturer 

 was no more a traveller in ' furrin' parts than they themselves 

 were. " Lor, Sir ! " said an old crone at the close of the pro- 

 ceedings, " us did think now as yu'd bean there yureself." I have 

 no doubt, if the truth were known, that this untoward revela- 

 tion prevented the simple folks from contributing half as many 

 halfpence as they otherwise would have done towards provid- 

 ing pocket-handkerchiefs, umbrellas, tooth brushes, hymn 

 books, and other articles, conventionally held to be necessary 

 for the welfare of the heathen blacks. 



However, whatever my readers may be disposed to believe, 

 after reading my descriptions, I am painfully aware of the fact 

 that I have been " there/' although this may not help me to 

 paint very clearly the physical features which govern the dis- 

 tribution of species. 



If you could steer a balloon straight enough from N.N.W. to 

 S.S.E. or vice versa, to traverse the whole length of the tract, 

 and obtain a good bird's-eye view of its configuration, you 

 would see little else than a congeries of rugged hills too numer- 

 ous to count, with every variety of contour, traversed in all 

 directions by deeply cut precipitous ravines and valleys, through 

 which the rivers and streams, flowing westwards from the 

 Ghats, have, for ages untold, scoured their tortuous courses. 

 Except in Savant Vadi, where the jungles have been jealously 

 preserved, you would see betwixt sea and Ghats, from 

 November to June, a monotonous succession of bare hill sides 

 and plateaus of black slag-like rock, almost wholly unrelieved 

 by verdure, and would lament the short-sightedness of previous 

 generations of rulers who sat still and looked on unconcerned, 

 while this wholesale denudation was being gradually and surely 

 effected. You would note, in pleasing contrast, the snug, well- 



