184 A CRUISE IN THE LACCADIVE SEA 



grown young ones, in the hope that they would live, 

 at anyrate until the first moult should reveal their 

 specific parentage. Unfortunately the only one that 

 did not die a natural death committed suicide, so that 

 I am unable to say what the two species of terns 

 were that were breeding on Pitti Bank in November 

 1 89 1 — and for this I fear that I shall be much blamed 

 by my ornithological friends. 



With this short and deplorably insufficient account 

 of the Pitti atoll, I now take my leave of the Laccadive 

 Islands. I have been careful to say no word about 

 the political and social features of their village com- 

 munities, for the very good reason, first, that I merely 

 got glimpses of some of the islands, glimpses that 

 were too hurried to permit me to collect the material 

 for a proper understanding even of their zoological 

 and botanical characters, to which I thought it my 

 prime duty to attend ; secondly, because I do not 

 wish to speak about things that I have not heard 

 and seen for myself ; and thirdly, because I can say 

 something of these matters when I take my readers 

 to the neighbouring island of Minnikoy, where the 

 social conditions seem to be very much the same as 

 those of the Laccadives. Moreover, what had to be 

 left undone by me had long before been very well 

 done by others, notably by Mr A. O. Hume, whose 

 very interesting paper, entitled The Laccadives and 

 the West Coast," will be found in Stray Feathers ^ 



