690 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HtSfORY SOCIETY, Vol. X. 



Colonel Kenneth Mackenzie also told me of an extraordinary scene h^ 

 witnessed once in the Berars. One night he sat up over a buffalo which he 

 tied near some water for some tigers which drank there. A bear came down^ 

 and seeing the buffalo went straight at it. The buffalo knocked him over 

 with its horns, and the bear charged with the same result no less than three 

 times. He then thought he had enough of it and went off, but he had 

 scarcely gone 100 yards when he met a tiger coming down to drink. 

 Colonel Mackenzie was unable to see what happened, but from the noise the 

 bear made and the rush down the hill, he felt sure the bear received a good 

 drubbing from the tiger. The tiger then came down to drink and was fired 

 at and wounded but was not killed. 



I once sat up for a bear which had been tracked in some hollow hills in 

 the Panch Mahals. I was placed high up in a tree and the bear came out 

 when it was just getting dark. I fired at him about 100 yards off and missed 

 liim, but the bear came straight at my tree and ran through some anderwood 

 beneath me and got away. The whiz of the bullet, I think, annoyed him^ 

 The Koilia Valley, near Mahableshwar, is a great stronghold for bears, and 

 will, I think, always remain so. The hills are covered with very dense under- 

 growth, and it is almost impossible to see the bears in a beat. I have often 

 been after them there and killed but few, although over and over and again I 

 heard the beat pass quite close to, but was unable to see it. On one occasion 

 I got three bears in about five minutes. They came out of the beat all close 

 to one another. I knocked over the first and wounded the second which 

 turned and fought the third, I suppose under the belief that the third was 

 the author of the pain produced by my bullet, and while thus engaged 

 I killed them both. I have noticed that several sporting writers have 

 observed wounded bears turn on their companions in a similar way. 



The excellent photograph, which accompanies these notes, was taken by 

 Captain F. T. Williams, 



No. II.— THE RE-DISCOVERY OF STRYCRNOS RBEEDII (Cla-rke). 



In an extremely interesting article on the Serpent's Wood of the Portuguese 

 which appeared at page 424 of Vol. VIII of your Journal, Dr. Dalgado 

 drew attention to the mystery attaching to the species of strychnine which 

 was figured by Kheede so long ago as 1688, and which had never been ob- 

 served since. 



It may interest him and others of your botanical readers to hear that this 

 plant was identified by its fruit by the late Mr. M. A. Lawson, Government 

 Botanist, when travelling with me in the Travancore forests at the end of 

 1893, and that I have lately obtained some fully-opened flowers. 



Stryclmos rheedii is an enormous climber, occurring in our evergreen forests 

 at all elevations from the sea-level to 3,000 feet and stretching over the 



