1116 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII. 
of any country which can claim the noble bird as its own. India, however, is 
not much better off than we are in this matter ; for only six specimens are known 
to have been obtained in all India, and these have been young birds. This 
shows, as Mr. Stuart Baker notes, what other evidence has indicated, that yoimg 
birds, whether from inexperience or the heady adventurousness of youth, have 
a tendency to range farther on migration than their more prudent elders. But 
other members of the Bustai-d family are numerous. They have need to be ; 
for some are easy to shoot, and the wiles by which they are circumvented by 
native sportsmen are many. One method is to approach them on foot behind 
cover of a camel, walking the camel round the birds in diminishing circles imtil 
within range. Another trick is to go after them at night with a lantern and a 
cowbell, the birds being accustomed to the sound of the cowbell and knowing it 
to mean no harm. A more laborious plan is to stud the ground thick with 
nooses and then walk the birds carefully into the area where the snares are set. 
Bustaixis are a favourite quarry for hawking, and have been so hunted from time 
immemorial. But meanest of all the devices is that of the Bhils, who light a cir- 
cular fire round the bird’s nest, which the hen bird promptly tries to extinguish 
by beating it with her wings, so singeing them that she cannot fly and is then 
easily run down on foot. In Jerdon’s day the Great Indian Bustard was so 
plentiful that one man claimed to have shot over one thousand with his rifle. 
INIore recently a “ so-called sportsman,” as Mr. Stuart Baker describes him, 
in Assam shot sixty-four Bengal Floricans in a day, in the breeding season, by 
walking backwards and forwards across the narrow area amid waters where the 
birds were nesting. “ It would be excellent,” says Mr. Stuart Baker, “ if the 
shooting of females could be altogether stopped for some years to come, as there 
is no doubt that the Florican has been seriously decreasing in 
late years.” 
The nineteen coloured plates in the Second Volume, as well as the majority 
of those in the first, are all by Mr. Gronvold, the quality of whose work is always 
admirable. If there is any falling away from his high standard here, it is in the 
picture of the Cotton Teal, where the contempt of sportsmen for that pretty 
but impalatable fowl has perhaps reacted to damp the enthusiasm of the artist. 
The other drawings are by J. G. Keulemans and G. E. Lodge. The excellence 
of the former’s work is well knowm ; and it is a high comphment to the few plates 
by Mr. Lodge to say that they are not imworthy to stand beside the drawings 
of the other two masters. As for Mr. Stuart Baker’s own work, it would be 
difficult to say where to turn for a better model of what such a book should be. 
The author is himself a sportsman and nature-lover as well as a naturalist. He 
is excellent both in his literary style and in the judgment shown in the selection 
of material, whether from his own experience, from earlier authorities, or from 
other sources. 
