26 THE COMMON CRANE. 
kinds, almost to the exclusion of animal food, is as fat, tender, 
and well tasted a bird as can be found, and when properly cooked 
well merits any praises that our forefathers, who chiefly saw 
erain-fed birds, may have bestowed on them. 
All depends upon the locality and food. In parts of the 
country where no large rivers offer them pure air and water, and 
where, when not feeding elsewhere, they haunt the marshes and 
morasses, they are never, even though fat, very good, but where 
these advantages are available, and (as in so many parts of the 
Doab during the three first months of the year) the fat of the 
land is theirs to revel in at will, they emerge superior to the com- 
mon run of comestibles, and furnish, unless betrayed by the male- 
volent stupidity of the ordinary native cook, a truly royal dish. 
Here, in India, the Crane, undoubtedly prefers grain of all 
kinds—wheat, gram, rice and pulses, together with tender young 
shoots of all these, while they are yet young—to all other food. 
Perhaps of all things they most love the young pods of an 
arborescent pulse, the Urhur or Dalas it is often called, (Cajanus 
zndicus,) and in the low alluvial lands of our larger rivers in which 
this grows into miniature trees, six and seven feet (or even more) 
in height, you may at times, after watching a flock settle, push © 
your way through the scented golden-blossomed thicket, and 
enjoy the luxury of knocking over a brace right and left as they 
rise, flustering noisily and clumsily out of the heavy cover. Not 
only do they eat the young pods at such times, but also quantities 
of the yellow pea-like flowers, and at other times, too, flower buds 
seem not to come amiss to them, and Jerdon mentions one he 
examined that had fed exclusively on the buds of the safflower. 
Vegetables also attract them, and in China Swinhoe says that 
they feed chiefly at one time onthe so-called sweet potato, 
which I need hardly say is no more a potato than a horse- 
chestnut is either a horse or a chestnut. But the strangest article 
of diet for birds of this kind is the one in which they so 
greedily indulge in parts of the Punjab. As children, we read 
with mingled incredulity and wonder the fable of the fox and 
the grapes, and it is not until we have travelled far east that we 
begin to realize that foxes and jackals are really passionately 
fond of grapes, and I can well fancy European friends who have 
known Cranes only in their northern homes receiving, with simi- 
lar feelings, the statement that these huge waders are devoted 
to Watermelons! But such is the case; in the sandy plains of 
Ferozpore, Sirsa, Hissar and other parts of the Punjab, the 
husbandmen when sowing the giant and bulrush millets, 
sow watermelons largely, and when the millets have been 
reaped, the otherwise bare stubbles resemble some deserted 
battle field, thickly strewed with balls of all sizes from a 3-poun- 
der (represented by countless wild colocynth fruits) up to a 
13-inch shell. The watermelons grow by millions; there 
is no sale for them ; any passer-by may pluck and eat unchal- 
