1160 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



breeder at 13,000 feet and over. The nests are of dry grass lined with 

 hair and always placed in a hole in the ground. The full clutch appears 

 to be four ; the bird can frequently be caught on the nest as she sits very 

 close. I do not think this bird has been recorded as breeding in these 

 parts before, though, of course, it has been from Cashmere and elsewhere. 



Besides the Grandala, I was unfortunate in finding nests with young 

 only of Ryrrhospiza punicea, the Red-breasted Rose -Finch ; Ticlio&roma 

 muraria, the Wall-creeper ; and Buteo ferox, the Long-legged Buzzard ; of 

 other nests of interest, which however have been recorded before from 

 other parts, we got Lenva nivicola, the Snow-Partridge ; Cephalopyrus 

 flammiceps, the Fire-cap ; Larvivora brunnea, the Siberian Blue Chat ; Turdus 

 viscivorus, the Missel-Thrush ; Sitta leucopsis, the White-cheeked Nuthatch ; 

 Oreocincla divoni, the Long-tailed Mountain Thrush ; Accipiter nisus, Sparrow 

 Hawk ; Chelidorhynx hypoxanthum, the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher ; Pycnorkam- 

 phus carneipes, the White-winged Grosbeak ; Horomis pallidus, the Pale 

 Bush- Warbler, and Anorthura nepalensis, the Nepal Wren. 



Barbilly, December 1910. S. L. WHYMPER. 



No. XXI.— THE BROAD SNOUTED MUGGER IN THE INDUS. 



A fallacy that numbered me among its victims until quite recently 

 was that of the non-existence in the Punjab rivers of the broad-snouted 

 mugger, i.e., either Crocodilus porosus or palustris, the variety Gavialus 

 yangeticus, or fish-eating crocodile, is of course common. Formerly I had 

 supposed that this latter species was the only one to be found in the Indus 

 or its tributaries, and from questioning other sportsmen it appeared that 

 I was by no means the only one to hold these views. Quoting from the 

 Indian Field Shikar Booh, it being the only reliable work in which I have 

 found any reference to the crocodile, we learn that Crocodilus prosus in- 

 habits the rivers of Bengal, the East Coast of India and Burma, whilst 

 the habitat of palustris is practically the same as that of porosus. So there 

 would seem to be fair excuse for my former supposition. 



During a three years' sojourn in Dehra Ismail Khan, I never heard of 

 such a thing as a broad-snouted crocodile in the Indus. Though, I shot 

 not a few fish-eaters and spent many days after them. In October last 

 I proceeded on a boating trip downstream, and in due course of time 

 arrived opposite the formerly important town of Leiah, some sixty miles as 

 the crow flies from my starting point. The boatmen had already excited 

 my curiosity by accounts of some broad-snouted crocodiles, which lived 

 in a " dhand " or sluggish tributary of the Indus close to Leiah. They 

 said there was a regular colony of these brutes living in this place, the 

 larger ones measuring 10-12 feet in length and the smaller ones anything 

 down to 3 or 4 feet ; that they had taken several people during the last 

 four years or so, besides occasional goats, sheep, &c, and that they were 



