730 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XNl. 



All other writers agree with the above ; Hodgson adds hill 

 'rice to the crops they frequent and Hume says that they are 

 ■often found in millet fields, other sportsmen have written to 

 inform me that they have shot them out of bajra, Indian corn, 

 •wheat and even young sugarcane. Inglis also informs me that 

 an Behar they are sometimes put up in the indigo fields which 

 .aftbrds them good cover. 



In fact, the Likh may be found in an}:^ crop which is dry under 

 foot, not too dense to make walking difficult and not too high, but 

 preferably they keep to grass land or to grain fields into which 

 they are tempted to feed. 



Unfortunately the Likh has a habit during the breeding season 

 •of jumping into the air to attract the opposite sex and this has 

 led to its undoing. All the writers cpioted by Hume mention 

 ithis habit and its disastrous effects and Hume himself says. " Owing 

 •to the unsportmanlike manner in which these beautiful birds are 

 imassacred during the breeding season, they are everywhere di- 

 minishing in numbers and will, in another half a century, be, I 

 fear, almost extinct." Mr. J. Davidson also recorded that j^ear 

 by year he noticed a diminution in their numbers in the Deccan. 

 They are not yet extinct, nor have their numbers decreased to the 

 ■extent Hume feared, but there can be no doubt that everywhere 

 the Lesser Florican is less common now-a-daj^s than it was when 

 Hume wrote in 1879, thirty-two years ago. 



Davidson, describing the way the}^ are killed, writes, " Florican 

 are found sparinglj?^ in Mysore, but I only saw one on two occa- 

 sions in the Tumkur District, during last year. It is a migrant 

 •during the rains to Western Guzerat where it is remorselessly shot 

 down while breeding, but apparently avoids the Panch Mahals 

 almost entirely ; at least only one specimen has been secured there 

 ■during the last few years. 



" They ax'e ordinarily shot in the Deccan in the long grass bhirs, 

 being flushed by a line of beaters, the guns walking along with 

 the beaters. In the breeding season the cocks are sometimes shot 

 in the following way : — In the early morning the gunner, for one 

 can hardly call him a sportsman, goes to a bhir, where he knows 

 there are birds, and waits till he sees one jump up in the grass 



