MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 6£9 



2' -9^" at the shoulder when about three months old, so that there was probably 

 little difference in their heights and that of a single calf, at biith. Of newly 

 born single calves measured, heights ranged between 2'-7" and 2'-n". 



I have met one man only who has actually seen twin calf elephants, and 

 but very few who have even heard of such a case. The mother is a timber 

 working animal of Messrs. Steel Brothers & Co., Ltd. 



MouLMEiN, BuKMA, GORDON HUNDLEY. 



\2th October 1920. 



No. VIII.—" MAN-EATING MONKEYS AND POISONOUS LOCUSTS. " 



May I be permitted to call your attention to two interesting natural his- 

 tory matters. 



The writer of an article in theDJiarwar Vritt of 13th November 1873 states 

 that a man-eating monkey made its appearance at Dharwar. '' It ate one or 

 two and killed two or more persons in the neighbouring villages and seriously 

 hurt a prostitute at Dharwar." 



The Maharashtra Mitra of 15th January 1874 states that recently locusts 

 appeared in several villages round about the village Ankalkhop, of Taluka 

 Tasgaum, and committed great havoc. At Ankalkhop they killed by I heir 

 stings a young child which was sleeping on a raised seat in a field, and by 

 similar means destroyed a j^oung buffalo. 



The British Government can now, I think, rest on its laurels. During the 

 past fifty year^ it has practically exterminated carnivorous monkeys and the 

 more dangerous locusts. 



A. C. MILLER. 



PooNA, 23ri Sept. 1920. 



No. TX.— MELANISM IN THE RED-VENTED BULBUL 

 {MOLPASTES sp.). 



The well-marked lines, along which nature carries on its functions in its var- 

 ious departments, generally arrest our attention, and are taken by us as the 

 invariable laws which govern its operations in the departments concerned, 

 But there are other subsidiary lines tliat cross them at distant intervals, and 

 along which operate the phenomena that are looked upon as exceptions. But 

 are there no laws that govern these exceptions, which, subtle though the}- be, 

 exist nevertheless, and produce their results in cycles of their own ? The ordi- 

 nary man may stop short by calling the exceptions as such, and may think 

 that his enquiry has reached there its end. But the duty of the scientist 

 stretches farther ; for he should try, and may well be able to draw his induction 

 from a large number of lecorded exceptions, about which full and accurate 

 data have been carefully collected by different inquirers ; and this induction 

 can throw the Hght, under which can be seen the causes that bring about the 

 aberrations. The collection of these exceptions being a nina qua non of these 

 inductions, I proceed to record details about a melanistic bulbul that I have 

 come across, in the hope that this, with other such cases, brought to hght and 

 recorded by other inquirers, may divulge to future workers in this field the 

 secret ways along which the exceptions are worldng. 



In the July number of the Agricultural Magazine of London, I described a 

 case of albinism in a Bulbul (Molpastes) with its characteristic eyes and legs. 

 Such deviation is very rare. I have recently come across another deviation 

 but of the opposite sort, viz., melanism, in a bird of the same species— rtz., Mol- 

 pastes hengalensis—ahont the identity of which there is not the least doubt. This 



