256



Mr. Aubyn Trevok-Battye



I like to hear it as I sit in my study writing, and it brings back

memories of a beautiful old walled and moated Kentish garden

where they kept thirty-nine. (There was wire netting round the

beds.) It seemed strange to hear that familiar call in the jungle of

Nepal, and it required little effort of the fancy to be back in my chair

at home, or in that sleepy ancient garden with the sun upon the

hollyhocks and the lizards darting into the crannies of the walls.

The Peacock is the national emblem of Nepal. But to see Peacocks

in their numbers you must go into Rajputana, for the bird is sacred

there. There are flocks of them about the fields as one passes in the

train.


Jungle Fowl ought to be domestic, sometimes they pretend to

be. I remember passing very early one morning through a sleeping

Sinhalese village, and as I passed the outskirts poultry were searching

a heap of straw dropped in the middle of the road. They were a

mixed lot, and I did not pay much attention to them ; one or two looked

like “ Indian Game.” But as I came up three ran off and on reach¬

ing the ditch at the roadside spread their wings and flew into the

jungle. They were the Ceylon Jungle-Fowl (Galius lafayettii), only

found in Ceylon. The other fowls went on with their scratching.

One is constantly seeing Jungle-Fowl in Ceylon, and a cock, when

the sun shines on him, is a beautiful sight in his gold and red. These

birds are shy rather than wild, and if you follow them into the

jungle, though they usually run, will sometimes fly up on to a branch

and look at you. I saw very little of Jungle-Fowl in India. There

are two, the Red Jungle-Fowl (Gallus ferrugineus) and Sonnerat’s

Jungle-Fowl (G. sonnerati ). (We have them in the Zoo, but not, I

think, the Sinhalese bird). I only saw the former and I saw them,

I think, but three times. One day I was walking up the road from

Khalsi to Chakrata and came to a corner where the road turned

sharply to the right. On that hand was the wall and the descent,

while on the left hand was the steep rocky jungle. Just at this

point a hollow sloped down to the road. As I turned the corner I

came right upon two Jungle-Fowl and two Cheer Pheasants who

were busily engaged in hollowing out some root like a mangold wurzel,

fallen from a cart in the road. They fled up the hollow and dis¬

persed, the Jungle Fowl running' with wings open, the Pheasants



