QUAINT BEASTS AND QUEER HABITS. 207 
I have found incomplete clutches in late July. Thus a continuous supply of 
food is easily obtainable by the chicks, and they are able to fend for themselves 
when the season of scarcity returns, and they must scatter over a wider area to 
search for food. 
Another, in fact, I might say “the other” common game bird of the Burma 
jungles is the Silver Pheasant or “‘ Yit” ; for the Chinese Francolin sticks to the 
more open slopes and bush country of the foot-hills, while peafowl are very 
local. 
Both Jungle Fowl! and “* Yit ’ (as the Burmans call the silver pheasant) are 
snared in large numbers by tethering a tame cock bird of the species on top of 
some small mound in the jungle and surrounding him with horse-hair nooses. 
The tame bird then challenges the wild, who comes to do battle and is treacher- 
ously snared. Some of the decoy birds are extraordinarily successful and seem 
to take a delight in enticing their wild brethren to destruction ; such birds are 
greatly valued by the Burmans, and occasionally change hands for sums of money 
up to sixty or seventy rupees apiece. One “ Yit ’? was shown to me in the Papun 
district, which had been the principal agent in the catching of twenty-two of its 
species in a fortnight. 
Burmans are wonderfully persevering in the pursuit of small beasts for food ; 
the digging out of a Bamboo Rat or the pursuit of one of the big monitor lizards 
keeping them happily employed for hours. Occasionally you will see a couple 
of Burmans working the mud-flats surrounding a half-dried pond, one of them 
armed with a spade the other with a thin iron rod. This last the operator will 
thrust into the mud at intervals, and, on his getting the required ‘‘feel ’”’ at the 
end of it, his companion will dig there and eventually excavate a muddy lump 
which, on being washed, turns out to be a murrel. These fish are in the habit: of 
aestivating in the mud and are excellent eating. 
It always seems to me that we miss a lot of good things by our conservatism 
in the matter of what we eat. Strange fruits and vegetables we are fairly ready 
to try, but it is very hard to induce the average Briton to taste anything novel 
in the way of meat. Yet many unfamiliar animals are most excellent eating. © 
Monkey and porcupine I can personally vouch for, and the big monitor lizards are 
closely akin to the Iguana, and probably just as savoury food as that South 
American delicacy. We eagerly devour snipe yet despise many shore birds such 
as the Black Godwit and Curlew, whose mode of life is more cleanly and which 
are just as good on the table. Very few birds can compare with a roast bittern 
in January ; yet, when stationed in Peshawar in the vicinity of which canton- 
ment they are comparatively common, I found very few sportsmen who did not 
pass them by in ignorance of their culinary virtues. One of the best eating birds 
in the East is the bustard of every species, but there is a curious superstition in 
connection with them which I have come across both in India and Somaliland. 
At certain seasons of the year the bustard tribe feed largely on the Cantharides 
beetle, and it is said that the maa partaking of the flesh of their legs at that 
period, will become impotent. Why the poison should be contained in their 
legs only or whether there are any grounds whatever for the superstition I have 
failed to discover, 
The Houbara has very curious means of defence which is usually to be 
seen in action when hawking them in Northern India. When the hawk is close 
to them, they drop to the ground and squat. Then on his coming within range 
they eject a sticky fluid (almost like birdlime) all over him, halfblinding him and 
so glueing his feathers together as to render the hawk incapable of proper flight. 
The houbara then rises in the air again and continues on its way rejoicing, while 
the hawker rides up and finds a bedraggled object looking like a badly made 
feather duster, sitting in impotent rage on the ground. The wary experienced 
hawk will draw the houbara’s fire by feints, and then the latter’s supply of bird- 
- lime becomes exhausted and the hawk goes in and finishes him. 
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