1118 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXI. 



The favourite haunts of the Florican are thus well described by- 

 Hodgson, who says : " Tarai is an Indian term equivalent to Pays 

 Bas, Landes, Marches and Marshes, of European tongues ; and the 

 name Tarai is applied, par excellence, to a low-lying moist and 

 rarely redeemed tract of level waste, extending outside the Sal forest 

 along the base of the sub-Himalayas from the debouch of the 

 Ganges to the Brahmapootra. This tract of great extent and peculiar 

 features, is the favourite habitat of the Florican, which avoids the 

 mountains entirely, and almost, if not quite as entirely, the arid 

 and cultivated plains of the Doab, and of the provinces West of the 

 Jumna. It dwells indeed, upon plains exclusively, but never upon 

 nude or cultivated plains. Shelter of nature's furnishing is indis- 

 pensable to it, and it solely inhabits wide-spreading plains, suffi- 

 ciently elevated to be free from inundation, and sufficiently moist 

 to yield a pretty copious crop of grasses, but grasses not so thick 

 nor so high as to impede the movements or vision of a well-sized 

 bird that is ever afoot and always sharply on the look-out. Such 

 extensive, well-clad, yet uncultivated plains are, however, to be 

 found only on the left bank of the Ganges and accordingly I 

 believe that to that bank the Florican is nearly confined, and to 

 the Tarai portion thereof." 



I am afraid, however, that since Hodgson's days the Florican 

 has become less wise, for he now-a-days often haunts grass land 

 that is liable to inundation and indeed, throughout the cold 

 weather, he is found on the plains bordering the rivers and on the 

 islands in them, although during the rains these may form one 

 vast sheet of water with the river itself. 



The Florican prefers to frequent plains which are covered with 

 thin grass, or thin grass combined with scattered scrub jungle, 

 and much affects those tracts on which village buffalo feed and 

 in which tlie grass is eaten down to some 18 inches or two feet, 

 with here and there patches of higher grass, and others, again, bare 

 altogether. In the same way they haunt the plains of ekra and 

 grass after these have been burnt and the fresh crop has grown up 

 to a foot or so but is still much mixed with the burnt and wither- 

 ed stems of the previous year's growth. It is only in the height 

 of the rains and when no other cover is available for them that 



