470 NOVELTIES. 



denied having ever previously seeu the bird. We were one 

 and all exhausted with pushing through anS through the 

 thicket, and were so cut and scratched by the grass and bruised 

 with stumbles in the broken ground that we were scarcely able 

 to get back to our huts. But I had been very lucky. I had 

 dropped every bird that rose, some of them very difficult 

 shots. They had risen singly and at long intervals. 



Next day I let every one have a long sleep, a good break- 

 fast and a good smoke, and by 10 a.m. we were again in the 

 grass. By 3 o'clock I had knocked down five more, of which 

 however we failed to find one. After that we saw no more, 

 and I fully believe that there were only the two coveys of six 

 and five respectively seen and counted by my people. I have 

 had many hard days shooting in my life, but never any harder 

 than these two. 



But what can We think of the bird ? Can it really have 

 been a purely accidental straggler from further east ? Not 

 only did the villagers of the place declare that they had never 

 previously seen it, but the same was said in many other vil- 

 lages where I showed skins of it. Moreover, though I beat 

 numbers of other seemingly suitable spots, I never saw another. 

 On the other hand I never again had one-tenth of the number 

 of men beating any patch of grass that I had on those two 

 days, and no bird ever rose on that occasion until it chanced 

 to get so hemmed in between half a dozen beaters that no 

 other alternative remained to it, and about ten days after I shot 

 my nine birds, one of my men saw and shot one in the early 

 dawn just as it was retreating into a patch of grass, also at 

 the foot of the eastern hills, but about 50 miles further north. 



On the whole I conclude that, like the not very dissimilar 

 Ophrysia superciliosa, Gray, it is very, very seldom seen, 

 because it sticks, except just about daybreak, to practically 

 impenetrable grass jungle, and trusting wisely to its legs for 

 escape, never takes wing unless pressed to a degree that can 

 only happen in very exceptional cases. Even in the grey of 

 the dawn, it apparently only straggles into the lower grass at 

 the edges of the high grass, and when scuttling away looks, 

 my people said, much like a rat, so that under these circum- 

 stances, if sparsely distributed, it is not perhaps surprising 

 that it should never have been noticed or recognized by the 

 villagers, though these, I must confess, are not unfrequenfcly 

 pretty close observers alike of birds and beasts. 



Probably with good dogs to assist one, this species would 

 be found to occur, here and there, everywhere along the bases 

 of the eastern hills, just where they abut on the Manipur 

 plain. On the western side of this, which I have much more 

 thoroughly worked, they do not, I think, occur. 



