498 THE BIRDS OF THE LTJCKNOW CIVIL DIVISION. 



free from such vegetation, while all literally swarmed with 

 wild fowl in the cold weather. Now they are circumscribed in 

 area with a supply of water barely sufficient for irrigation 

 purposes, and their former characteristics have entirely changed. 

 Indeed that result might be looked for, seeing that the beds 

 of many were actually cultivated in 1877 and since. During 

 that year it should be remembered only 4£ inches of rain fell 

 in the rainy season proper, while the total fall for the year 

 amounted to only 11-66 inches. In the following year only 

 33-96 inches fell; in the preceding, only 23'67. It cannot, 

 therefore, be a matter of wonder that a great many jhils have 

 never recovered from the effects of the deficient rainfall of 

 these years, and that all that was special in their flora vanished 

 and has since failed to re-established itself except in sporadic 

 instances. 



But the destruction of the flora would not much matter wei'e 

 it not that the singhara plant has taken its place. The famine 

 of 1877-78 gave an immense impetus to its cultivation, and in 

 an economic sense the change is a matter for congratulation. 

 But it has had a terrible effect on the distribution of the millions 

 of wild fowl and water-birds that annually visit the Division, 

 due not so much to the cultivation of the plant as to the 

 presence of the people who rear it. At all hours of the day they 

 may be seen wading, or piloting themselves about on primitive 

 rafts, while they make night hideous in thwarting the threatened 

 depredatory raids of geese. The consequence is that on jhils 

 where birds were formerly abundant, they are rarely, if ever, 

 met with now. 



The change, great as it is, is of course unnoticed by those 

 who have never seen or shot over these jhils iu their palmy 

 days. There are still, fortunately, many of these natural 

 reservoirs where birds are plentiful in the season ; but if the 

 cultivation of the singhara nut becomes as general as it now 

 is in certain localities, a diminution in the number and variety 

 of their aquatic tenants will assuredly follow. 



But if years of deficient rainfall have thus partially obli- 

 terated the leading characteristics of these " watery wastes/' 

 it should also be remembered that the climate, for a portion of 

 each year, was comparatively dry and tenantless, when it 

 should have been saturated with moisture and teeming with 

 insect life. This naturally affected the avifauna, though in 

 a way that can only be conjectured ; but the probability is 

 that some species from the humid tracts and swamps of 

 Bengal might have paid the Division a visit had the climate 

 been 5 favorable, and these we may hope for in future years. 

 On the other hand, it is equally as probable that we had 

 some visitors that nothing short of a drought will bring us again. 



