THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 15 



" Just at this moment, the dogs rout out a brace of Rufous-neoked 

 Partridges from amongst the bracken beside the path, and both are 

 added to the bag. 



" The bed of the stream looks, and usually is, a grand place for a 

 Woodcock. Here and there are swampy bits, or patches of bracken, 

 while both banks are covered with fern and daphne, with a fairly 

 thick pine forest over all. 



" The dogs hunt this valley for about sis hundred yards down to 

 the bottom, but there is no sign of anything till I am just coming out 

 of the wood, when I hear a flutter to my right, and the orderly shouts 

 he has put up a bird. 



" I push my way through the grass, cobwebs and busbes, and ask 

 if he has marked it down. 



" He says he has, so we walk it up, I see a small brown shape 

 flitting through the undergrowth, and the second cock of to-day is 

 added to the bag ; we then come out and rejoin the sepoys on the road 

 and march home, the result of the morning's work being a march of 

 seven miles up and down about 1,100 ft. over fairly rough country, 

 with a brace of partridges and two woodcock to show at the end 

 of it, all done within two and a half hours." 



It will be seen from what Major Wilson writes that we do not in 

 India get birds in the numbers they are obtained at home. In Shillong 

 and its vicinity four or five birds in a day's tramp must be considered 

 fair sport and six to eight birds something quite out of the common. 

 Major Wilson has shot eight to his own gun in a day and Mr. 

 Faichnie, of the Postal Service, once got nine but I have heard of 

 no bigger bag to one gun in a single day's shooting. In the Nilgi- 

 ris, Hume says " ten or twelve birds to two guns in a morning is 

 quite an unusually fine bag so it must not be supposed that they lie 

 thick as a rule, and yet in particular parts of the hills five or sis are 

 sometime shot out of one tiny shola, not perhaps above thirty yard- 

 wide and not a quarter of a mile in length." The largest bao- re- 

 corded for India is that recorded by A. Grahame Young in Hume 

 and Marshall's Game Birds of India 28 years ago. Ihis bag was 

 made in the Tos Forests in Kullu. Hume quoting him, thus records 

 the bag. " The end of January is about the best time for them. The 

 largest bag that I know of was 33 birds to two gnus between Nuggur 

 and Hyson ; a good many others were missed. Jf the season be at 



