118 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892 



the bushes, while I kept a little ahead of them. It is very pretty shooting. 

 The birds are very much like the English ones about the back, but have dark 

 bars on the breast, and pink legs, armed, in the case of the cocks, with sharp 

 spurs half an inch long. They fly very well, though not quite so sharply as 

 the home bird. I have weighed a great many large individual birds, and have 

 often got an old cock of 15 oz. ; but this is exceptional, the ordinary weight 

 being from 11 oz. to 13 oz. They are excellent eating, but owing to the 

 climate, cannot be hung long enough to get the true game flavour. We found 

 plenty of birds in the north of the island, and had excellent sport with them. 



The white-headed fish eagle was very common. These grand birds often 

 measure over 6 ft. across the wings, and their strength of talon is wonderful. 

 I saw one do an extraordinary thing ; he pounced down on to the lagoon, 

 seized a good-sizred fish, fully ^ lb. and soared upwards with it in his talons. 

 He was some 90 yards or 100 yards distant, and I fired at him with the rifle. 

 The bullet no doubt whizzed close to him, for he gave a twist and dropped the 

 fish, but instantly he darted downwards again, and caught it almost as soon as 

 it touched the water, and bore it off. 



On the following day (Jan. 5) we had another deer drive, and I bagged a 

 buck, missing two other changes, and then we left the island and sailed across 

 the back water to the mainland. We landed at a place called Kutherai Mallee 

 (Horse Mountain). Why " horse " I cannot say, but there is a small hill there 

 which is very remarkable, considering the unvarying flatness of the rest of the 

 coast. There was a miserable little hamlet in the neighbourhood, where there 

 were a few Tamils, and one of them undertook to show me a place where bears 

 came at night to drink. We found the fresh track of one bear near a small 

 pond, and I determined to watch there. This particular bear had a certain 

 notoriety abotit there, from the fact that he had a lame foot, as his track plainly 

 showed. The natives of the village spoke of him as "the cripple," and I was 

 told that he had been shot at more than once. 



It was not the best time of year for night shooting, being the wet monsoon, 

 but in this part of the island there is never a very great abundance of standing 

 water ; the sandy soil absorbs the rain almost as fast as it falls. It was a good 

 moon, and we watched the pool through the night, but no bear appeared. In 

 the morning we went and examined another- pool, abxDut half a mile distant, 

 and found that our lame friend had paid it a visit during the night : his peculiar 

 track could not be mistaken. We resolred to watch here in the night, and 

 placed pieces of newspaper on the bushes surrounding the other pool. This 

 was done with the idea that, if the bear went there, he would be frightened by 

 the appearance of the paper, and might possibly come to our pool : but as we 

 afterwards found, he never went there at all. It was about 2 a.m. when we 

 heard the welcome rustle in the jungle which told of the advent of bruin, and 

 when he came to the water he gave a splendid shot under the clear moonlight. 

 The bullet caught him well behind the shoulder ; but, as is usually the case, 



