THE SNOW-WREATH OR SIBERIAN CRANE. 13 
Many years have now elapsed since I first shot one in Ladakh. 
This was late in September, and the birds were doubtless on their 
way to the plains of India. They arrived at a small fresh-water 
lake, near the Tso-khar, in the Ley District, beside which I 
was encamped, towards nightfall ; and though after I had fired 
at them and secured a specimen they again (contrary to their 
usual custom) settled at some little distance, I did not molest 
them further. They remained there all night, and I saw them 
again up to nine o’clock, but they had left the place when I 
went down to the lake again about noon. 
After this, though constantly shooting both in the Himalayas 
and many parts of the North-Western Provinces, I did not 
again meet with this species until 1859, when I succeeded in 
shooting one out of a flock of some five and twenty, which I 
found in a large jhil in the north of the Etawah District. 
Later again, during the winters of 1865-66 and 1866-67, I 
procured numerous specimens, and had opportunities of watch- 
ing the habits of the species rather closely. The locality in which, 
during these two winters, I saw and procured, comparatively, 
so many of these beautiful birds, is somewhat peculiar. A 
broad straggling belt of Dhak (Butea frondosa) jungle, some 
ten miles in width, at one time doubtless continuous, but now 
much encroached upon and intersected in many places by cul- 
tivation, runs down through nearly the whole of the ‘“ Doab,” 
marking, possibly, an ancient river course. Just where the 
northern and southern boundaries of the Etawah and Mynpoorie 
Districts lie within this belt, the latter encloses a number of 
large shallow ponds or lakes (“jhils’ as we call them), which, 
covering from two hundred acres to many square miles of 
country each, at the close of the rainy season, are many of them 
still somewhat imposing sheets of water early in January, and 
some few of them of considerable extent, even as late as the 
commencement of March. Mohree-Sonthenan, Mamun,; Sirsai- 
Nawur, Kurree, Beenan, Soj, Hurrera, Suman, Kishnee, Phur- 
enjhee, are some of the largest of these rain-water lakes, many 
of which abound with rushes and sedges, and as the waters 
gradually dry up or are drawn off for irrigating purposes, become 
successively the favorite haunts of the White Crane. 
There will always be, at any particular time, two or three 
“jhils,” that for the moment they particularly affect, and these 
are,asa rule, just those that then happen to average about 
eighteen inches to two feet in depth, and that have a good deal 
of rush (Scérpus carinatus amongst others) somewhere in the 
shallower parts. 
To this tract of country they make their way as early as the 
25th of October (and possibly sooner, though this is the earliest 
date on which I have observed them), and there they remain 
at least as late as the end of March, or perhaps a week or two 
longer, During the whole of our cold season they stay in this 
