Contributions to the Ornliliology of India, SfC. 131 



jackals,, and when he reached his journey's end and learnt 

 the ,truth, no words could express his remorse ; he hurried back, 

 found the body of his too faithful companion, untouched by bird 

 and beast, and urg-ed by some such feelmg as that which made 

 the '' early Persian choose some earth o'er g-azing peak, as his 

 most fitting altar,'' carried the body up to the topmost height, 

 and there built over it a tomb, to point a sad moral to the tale, 

 and warn, but warn men vainly, against hasty and irrevocable 

 acts. 



20f/i. — There are numbers of marsh harriers, about here, and 

 indeed about almost all the broads we have visited, but the 

 curious thing is that though I have seen hundreds of youn^ 

 birds, I do not think I have seen a single adult. The same is 

 the case in England and some parts of Europe, and is another 

 illustration of that well-known, but not fully explained fact, 

 that the young of many species, regularly and yearly, extend 

 their migrations to districts and even provinces, which as adults 

 they never, except quite as an exceptional case, re-visit. On a 

 tiny grassy islet, only a few 3^ards square, I saw a magnificent 

 adult, H. alhicilla, and two young ones, fighting with two Im- 

 perial eagles over what proved to be the dead body of a cormo- 

 rant ! I got within about 60 yards of them and fired my long* 

 8 bore, with 2j ounces of double B at them, and positively 

 knocked the whole five of them over ; but they picked them- 

 selves up and flew away, only one of them seemingly the worse, 

 before (the weeds were terribly thick) I could push up near 

 enough to hurt them with my double gun which was loaded 

 unfortunately with small shot. There were enormous numbers 

 of Aythjaferina, at several dense patches of which I got good 

 shots, bagging" a great many. Lots of all kinds of duck, terns, 

 g'ulls, and waders. 



^\st. — Marched 32 miles to Gool Mahomed, On the road saw 

 several flocks of Pterocles senegallas. They have a peculiar cry 

 just like that of a child's toy. We also saw and shot some 

 exustios, but these were much less numerous than the former. We 

 shot two desert larks, but there was nothing" else very noticeable 

 to record. 



• 22«^. — We all went out shooting, and Watson killed a pair or 

 Pterocles LicJitemteinii , a bird new to India, and the first I ever 

 saw in the flesh. I killed a desert lark, and in the little patches of 

 sirson (a kind of mustard) lying far out in the waste, I killed 10 

 of Bucanetes gifliagineus, the desert bullfinch, another bird new to 

 our Indian Avifauna. From Sindh to the Canaries ! what a 

 range for such a species. 



These birds look at a little distance for all the world like spar- 



