Oct. 22, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
645 
further south. It was in every way a complete 
contrast. The ground consisted of fallow rice 
fields, affording but little covert for the many 
birds they held. The -day was very cold, with 
a drizzly rain, no sun, and a gale of wind blow¬ 
ing. The snipe were extremely wild, and I 
tried them up wind, down wind, and across 
wind, finding, on that day, down wind in every 
way the best. The birds rose mostly quite out 
of range, but were compelled to turn up wind, 
and rising very high, they came back over me. 
giving the most sporting shots. When killed 
dead the bodies were carried thirty, forty, and 
even fifty yards by the wind before reaching 
the ground. Beaters, of course, were not re¬ 
quired. to put the birds up, and I made the two 
men with me walk twenty or thirty yards be¬ 
hind, one on each flank, and confine their atten¬ 
tion to marking down and picking up the dead 
birds. This time there were no four or five 
birds dead on the ground at once, and I lost 
none that I killed. 
Starting about half-past ten I shot on until 
well into the afternoon, and by then had killed 
and gathered sixteen couple. The actual ex¬ 
penditure of cartridges I have forgotten, but it 
was between eighty and ninety. 
Now. which of these two days was the more 
enjoyable? On the first everything was in 
favor of the gun, on the second everything in 
favor of the bird. While changing my wet 
clothes before my homeward journey, and men¬ 
tally comparing the two days. I unhesitatingly 
gave the palm to that just ended. The first day 
lacked variety, and it required but little skill to 
kill. On the second day every bird bagged be¬ 
came a distinct incident; every variety of shot 
presented itself; the snipe were full of life and 
cunning, swerving intentionally when the gun 
was raised, and being blown out of their course 
suddenly .by 'an extra heavy puff of wind. 
In hot countries snipe seldom present such a 
difficult target as in England, and it added to 
my pleasure to be reminded of the old country 
by weather as well as by really good birds. 
Most shooters will probably agree with me that 
the second day, gave the better sport. 
BOTTOM-FISHING IN LOWER BURMA. 
Burma is a paradise for the angler, for 
Buddhism is the religion of the country, and an 
important tenet of this faith is that life must 
not be destroyed. As a consequence the lakes 
and ponds teem with all sorts of fish. The 
smallest sheet of water at least holds murral, 
fish so tolerant of lack of their natural element, 
that they can be kept alive for hours after they 
are caught by simply moistening them at in¬ 
tervals. Indeed when a small pond dries up in 
the course of the hot weather, the murral 
straightway bury themselves in the soft mud, 
and, if undisturbed, remain there aestivating 
until the rains come and release them. 
Another fish common in Burma is a small 
perch, very probably a close relative of the 
famous climbing perch, popularly supposed to 
make excursions out of the water in order to 
climb trees. The little Burmese perch does 
nothing so outre as this, but in its way it is 
an adventurous small creature, for after rain it 
makes up every tiny rivulet, however shallow. 
When the level of the Kan-Dau-Gyee Lake, at 
Rangoon, has risen with the first showers of the 
monsoon, one can everywhere see the partly 
submerged grass moving, as the adventurous 
perch forage about, with their backs almost 
out of the shallow water. 
This. Kan-Dau-Kyee Lake is full of fish—■ 
huge siluroids, fat labeo, hungry murral, silvery 
notopterus, semi-transparent gudgeon, and a 
host of other kinds stock its waters. 
The murral, and by this name I include sev¬ 
eral members of the Ophiocephalus family, is a 
fish much sought after by the native angler. 
There are numbers of natives in Burma, be it 
understood, who are either not Buddhists at 
all, or if so, are not so strict as to exclude fish 
from their menu. Madrasses, many of whom 
go over to Burma, are often skilful fishermen, 
and it is from Madras that bainy fibre, one of 
the few decent substitutes for gut, comes. . The 
esteem in which the murral is held is due to its 
solid flesh, few bones, and previously described 
vitality. Fishing for the murral, too, is an art 
in which patience and the ability to sit quiet are 
important factors. The native, as we all know, 
is very patient, and excels in sitting still. 
Murral are generally fished for with a live 
bait, and this no doubt is by far the most ef¬ 
fective way of angling for them. In the ponds 
of the government gardens at Rangoon I have 
seen natives fishing with a live mole-cricket, a 
method of fishing never observed by me any¬ 
where. else. When live' bait are unobtainable, a 
good substitute is a dead prawn. The ophioce- 
phali have their eyes set on the top of the head, 
clear evidence that they are in the habit of 
looking upward. We find accordingly that 
these fish feed largely at, or close to, the- sur¬ 
face. The live bait need not then be set low, 
about a foot and a half, from the float does well. 
I at first always used double gut when tank 
fishing for murral, and did not often get my 
tackle cut. Later, however, when trying these 
methods for the large murral of a Punjab river, 
I was sadly disillusioned, getting my stout gut 
shorn through again and again by these fishes’ 
teeth. After that experience I recommend fine 
gimp for this fishing. 
The siluroids grow to vast dimensions in the 
tanks and lakes of Burma. I remember well 
my astonishment and dismay when, fishing with 
a little trout rod and worm, in a small pond at 
Prome, I hooked a monster of perhaps thirty 
pounds. This fish, after running me all over 
the pool, sprang into the air, in order perhaps 
to show me his size, and directly afterward 
bit my slender gut in two. 
The great Rangoon lake affords excellent 
notopterus fishing. I apologize for the name, 
but there is no trivial English one that would 
serve to indicate with certainty the fish I mean. 
A wooden bridge, spanning an arm of the lake, 
was my favorite spot. Here, when I fished from 
the middle of the bridge, there was a good 
depth of water right under- the point of my rod; 
and when a good fish happened to be hooked 
it could be drawn to one or other bank and 
netted there. The notopterus is a silvery, thin¬ 
sided, but somewhat deep fish, and takes a 
worm with avidity when the water is in good 
order. The common size is about half-a-pound, 
with an occasional three-quarter-pounder. 
Labeo attain large dimensions in Burmese 
wavers. The well-known rohu of Bengal is one 
of the numerous labeo family. All are deep, 
thick, carp-like fish, and are to be angled for 
with paste bait. It is in fact glorified roach 
fishing, but as the labeos run so much heavier, 
the tackle has to be different. Rohu are quite 
commonly ten or twelve pounds in weight, and 
in large waters one must be prepared to deal 
with fish of thrice this size. 
The large siluroids, or fresh-water sharks, as 
they are often called, are to be taken with a va¬ 
riety of baits. One lure is a large live bait 
picketed to the bottom. If preferred, the live 
bait may be suspended from a float, but it must 
be on or close to the bottom, for the siluroids 
are very different in their habits from murral. 
I have often, too, taken fresh-water sharks on 
dead bait, or a bunch of worms. The smaller- 
sized ones, in rivers and clear ponds, will often 
take a spoon well. I have caught a good many 
up to six pounds or ,so, with a tiny spoon cast 
like a fly, and a single-handed trout rod. 
The fly-fisherman will do no great things in 
Lower Burma, it is best there to put one’s flies 
away, and take to methods of fishing which,'if 
not so fascinating, at least bring certain sport.— 
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Hunting Without a Gun, 
And other papers. By Rowland E. Robinson. With 
illustrations from drawings by Rachael Robinson. 
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This is a collection of papers on different themes con¬ 
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