THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 091 



Hume : stops and. forgets to tell us how to say what cry belongs to 

 which bird. Some of his correspondents try to show in what they 

 considered the difference exists. Stuart says : "It rises with a 

 sharp loud cry unlike the ordinary snipe, and its flight is heavier." 



Parker says that the Pintail has a more laboured flight than the 

 Fantail. 



Brooke also thinhs that the cry is different and the flight rather 

 slower and not so zig zag. 



On the other hand we have observers like Baldwin, Scully and 

 Butler, all declaring that they can find no difference in voice or 

 flight between the two birds. 



That some men can tell the difference is a fact as I found out one 

 day at the cost of one rupee per bird. I was shooting with a friend 

 who called out as a bird dropped " Hallo, that's a Pintail." It was 

 so right enough, but my sceptical nature made me think it was a 

 fluke his guessing correctly and I told him so. Thereupon he bet 

 me a rupee a bird that he would name the next ten birds he should 

 kill, and this he proceeded to do perfectly correctly and named as 

 they fell, 6 Fantail and 4 Pintail. This sportsman, however, said 

 that the voices were identical, but that the Fantail got up verti- 

 cally and then cleared off whilst there was a perceptible pause as it 

 changed direction ; the Pintail, on the other hand, rose on a slant 

 and kept going. He had never noticed any difference in their 

 zig zagging as Hume calls it. 



What is the best weapon for snipe ? A difficult question to 

 answer, and to every sportsman the answer would not be the same. 

 Hume, we see, advises a 20 or 24-bore with a dram of powder, but 

 this necessitates the man behind the gun being a brilliant shot 

 and also the snipe being comparatively domestic in their habits. 

 For a long day's shoot there is no doubt that the lighter the gun 

 carried, the less tired the shooter will get and the less his shooting 

 will deteriorate by the end of the day. There are few men, how- 

 ever, who are not strong enough to use a 1 6-bore throughout the 

 longest day ; personally, though I rejoice in but one arm, I find a 

 1 6-bore perfectly manageable at the end of the hardest day's 

 tramp ; and though I used a 20-bore one season I dropped it 

 because I could not shoot straight enough with it, and also found 



