THE BENGAL FLORICAN. 29 



to the Chapori land, and are found in mustard fields, where they 

 find many insects, especially when the mustard is in flower. 

 When this is cut, low grass jungle, known in Assam as the 

 ooloo grass, is their favourite haunt, especially where the grass 

 has been burnt and the young shoots are sprouting freely." 



As TO the nidiflcation of this species, I again quote Mr. 

 Hodgson : — 



" The Florican is neither polygamous nor monogamous, nor 

 migratory nor solitary. These birds dwell permanently and 

 always breed in the districts they frequent, and they dwell also 

 socially, but with a rigorous separation of the sexes, such as I 

 fancy is paralleled in no other species. Four to eight are 

 always found in the same vicinity, though seldom very close 

 together, and the males are invariably and entirely apart from 

 the females after they have grown up. Even in the season of 

 love, the intercourse of the sexes among adults is quite transitory, 

 and is conducted without any of that jealousy and pugnacity' 34 ' 

 which so eminently distinguish most birds at that period. 



" In the season of love, the troops of males and females come 

 into the same neighbourhood, but without mixing. A male 

 that is amorously disposed steps forth, and by a variety of very 

 singular proceedings, quite analogous to human singing and 

 dancing, recommends himself to the neighbouring bevy of 

 females. He rises perpendicularly in the air, humming in a 

 deep peculiar tone and flapping his wings. He lets himself sink 

 after he has risen some fifteen or twenty yards ; and again he 

 rises and again falls in the same manner, and with the same 

 strange utterance, and thus perhaps five or six times, when one 

 of the females steps forward, and with her he commences a 

 courtship in the manner of a Turkey cock, by trailing his wings 

 and raising and spreading his tail, humming all the time as before. 



" When thus, with what I must call song and dance, the rites 

 of Hymen have been duly performed, the male retires to his 

 company and the female to hers ; nor is there any appearance 

 (I have at some cost had the birds watched most closely) of 

 further or more enduring intimacy between the sexes than that 

 just recorded, nor any evidence that the male ever lends his aid 

 to the female in the tasks of incubation and of rearing the young. 



" The procreative instinct having been satisfied, the female 

 retires into deep grass cover, and there, at the root of a thick 

 tuft of grass, with very little semblance of a nest, she deposits 

 two eggs, never more or less, unless the first be destroyed. If 



* Blyth denies this peaceful disposition, and says that not only do the males fight 

 in captivity, but that an experienced sportsman, who had shot many, assured him 

 that he had come upon two males fighting desperately and so eagerly that, upon 

 being disturbed, they renewed their conflict at a short distance, and thus allowed him 

 to bag both. This has often happened to me where Black Buck were concerned, but 

 I have never had the luck thus to catch Florican, 



