MISCELLANEOUS NOTES'. o85 



We need not, therefore, be surprised to hear, as we have this year, of< 

 the enormous bags which have been made in Scinde and other more 

 favoured places ; for the struggle for existence at the breeding places will,, 

 for those whose feeding resorts have not suffered, have been much^ 

 lightened. 



And it is on this that our hopes must rest, for as Scinde gets over stocked 

 the superfluous millions will spread southwards again in search of less 

 crowded pastures, and let us trust that when they do so, the feeding 

 grounds of Gujrat will so far have recovered as to hold forth some in- 

 ducement for them to tarry there. 



At the beginning of this paper I mentioned the cranes. Their more 

 or less complete disappearance is a curious incident and somewhat dif- 

 ficult to accouot for. But certain it is that during the last two years 

 in localities where I have seen them in millions : I should have had 

 some difficulty in counting them by hundreds. They are grain-feeding 

 birds and though the area under cultivation has been immensely restrict- 

 ed, yet it is difficult to say why the very good kharifi: crop of the last 

 two year's, for instance, did not attract more of them to Gujrat, but 

 certain it is that hardly any came. 



The whole of the closely allied class of non-emigrant waders generally 

 known as Paddy-birds, but to the more scientific sportsman classed under 

 the heads of Egrets, Herons, Ibises, &c., have suffered terribly. During 

 the famine year, by a curious natural process which it is difficult to under- 

 stand, they most of them did not breed at all, their breeding places which 

 are invariably in trees standing in water, being presumably to their eyes not 

 proper places to resort to, when standmg as they did high and dry ; and 

 each succeeding ye^r has told more severely on them so that now they are,, 

 comparatively speaking, in many places practically near extinction. 



"We have now only left for consideration the remaining class of game birds 

 and animals who breed with us, vi?., the partridge, rain-quail, sand-grouse- 

 and hares. During 1900-1901 I do not remember noticing any thing out of 

 the ordinary. But during the rains of 1901 every one must have remembered 

 the enormous quantity of rain-quail who were breeding in Gujrat ; the fact 

 that they were breeding did not, I regret to notice, prevent a good many 

 pseudo-sportsmen from shooting them. The same held good of sand-grouse- 

 and partridge and the season of 1901-1902 has, I fancy, been about the best 

 on record for all these, and also for hares, of which there have everywhere 

 been far more than I can remember during the last 20 years and more. Sand- 

 grouse have been, in some places, innumerable and those who- care to shoot 

 them over water have been able to make enormous bags, and I never re- 

 member seeing so many large coveys of the ordinary grey partridge. 



Curiously enough the Francolin or Painted Partridge seem to have suf- 

 fered. Probably being less ommivorous than his grey cousin he suffered 

 much in the famine year. It is curious how the h;>res managed to survive-, 



as 



