163 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
complete list of all the birds obtainable—a thing to be desired no doubt, 
but which I may never accomplish. 
Before commencing the catalogue itself, it may be advisable to give 
a brief description of the country in which I have worked. North 
Cachar in a small space gives as great a variety of country as most 
places of more than fifty times its area. -To the whole of the south the 
country is covered with ranges of rugged hills, the principal of which 
is the Barail range. The mountains of this part are in height from 2,000 
feet up to some 4,000 feet, or rather more, and the only valleys of any 
importance are those of the Jetinga River inthe West and of the Jiri 
and Jennam in the Hast ; these two latter running parallel with one 
another for about forty miles almost due south, and finally meeting in the 
plains of Cachar. As the centre of the sub-division is approached, more 
especially in the centre and west, the hills become less rugged, and do not 
run, with the exception of a few isolated peaks, above 2,500 to 3,000 
feet. In the central east the Hungroom and Léré range towers above 
all others. Hungroom stockade is some 5,400 feet high, and all round are 
peaks 600 to 800 feet higher, whilst a few miles distant across the Jiri and 
in Manipur territory are hills yet higher than these. Leaving Gunjong, 
which is just about the centre of the district, and working due north, 
the hills grow lower and lower until at the extremity of the sub-division 
one comes to a quantity of low-lying ground, in part covered, during the 
rains, with swamps and marshes overgrown with dense ekra and sun 
grass, but principally bearing evergreen forest, more or less broken up 
by patches of dry sun grass land and bamboo jungle. To the west and 
north-west is a lovely country of rolling hills and plateaux—a country 
consisting almost entirely of sun grass land, bearing a scattered growth 
of oak-forest, intermixed here and there with a few pines, whilst in the 
pockets and hollows the very thickest of forest, with close undergrowth, 
grows unrestrained. Here also are one or two upland valleys, of which 
the Umrang plateau is the chief, a great open space of gently undulating 
ground, covered with grass and merely dotted with single trees or small 
clumps growing on the higher parts: during the rains and even to a 
certain extent at other periods the hollows contain either stagnant 
water or slowly-running springs, some of which are brackish and entice 
every kind of wild animal into their neighbourhood. At the lowest 
