NATUKALIST IN INDIA. 151 



the most unhealthy in the district, but that he expected to be 

 soon promoted and sent to another part of the range, where 

 he would have a better house to shelter him from the blazing 

 sun. He felt somewhat concerned about the state of his 

 health, in consequence of a fever which had twice nearly- 

 finished him ; and judging from his wan and worn face, there 

 seemed just cause for the poor fellow's anxiety ; but, like 

 many others, he stuck to his post until the fever came again, 

 when, as I subsequently learned, his feeble strength gave 

 way, and he left his bones among the haunts of the houriar. 

 Young, during the day's ramble, found two lambkins and 

 bagged two rams. Our little herd of houriar, now consisting 

 of two males and two females, soon took kindly to tame 

 goats, and frisked around their foster-mothers as they would 

 have done with their own. The goats also became attached 

 to them, excepting one old dame, which refused to suckle her 

 foundling, and required to be held during the process. It was 

 delightful to watch the lambs rushing towards the goats on 

 our approach, and bleating whenever they found they had 

 strayed beyond a safe distance. For several days aU seemed 

 to thrive, when they began to pine away and die one after 

 another, with a discharge from the nostrils and cough, which 

 I found by dissection to arise from the well-known disease 

 pleuro-pneumonia, so fatal to the domestic animal ; arising 

 ia this case, in aU probability, from the want of the maternal 

 heat at night, when the temperature was low, even to nearly 

 freezing-point. 



The blue rock-thrush is not a rare tenant of the rocky 

 parts, which it enlivens with its joyous song. AU I have 

 examined in the Punjaub and lower Himalayan ranges were 

 of the short-billed variety ; the long-billed variety,* it would 



* Jmirii. As. Soc. xvi. 150. Mr. Blyth has since adopted the view here 



