26 LOTSY AND KUIPER, A PRELIM. STATEMENT OF THE RESULTS OF MR. 
villages, never also among his own chickens although these lived in the 
immediate proximity of the Cinchona plantation which was visited eve- 
ry evening by the wild cocks. | 
If any crossing with domestic poultry occurs in Java, it must occur 
at other places than this one and it certainly appears to be very much 
more frequent in British India than on Java, where the senior author 
never saw any but extremely wary wild birds, always keeping a safe 
distance between themselves and man. 
In British India and Burma things seem to be different as BEEBE 
describes l.c.p. 175 a scene near the Chinese border where in the midst 
of forty great black pigs and a crowd of scratching hens, there appeared 
a wild red jungle fowl, paying court to one of the latter; and quietly 
making his way through the throng until a water-carrier appeared upon 
the scene. Then he crept off towards the jungle and ten minutes later 
BEEBE heard „his sharp, decisive double crow, so free of quaver or 
drawl, so like the wild call of his pheasant kindred: cock-ka chärr! By 
carefully following, he could even observe him together with his mate. 
__,,Just below the yellow-green foliage of a clump of bamboo was a 
wallow, partly filled with water, and at the edge of this, scratching 
daintily in the damp so 1, was my junglefowl and his mate”. 
The cock allowed no fall of leaf or twig to escape him, and it was in- 
teresting to watch how, every second or two, he systematically swept 
the sky and the woods all about. The hen, evidently relying on his 
alertness, devoted all her attention to feeding, and her chuckle of 
content as she drew forth a large, protesting worm was delightful to 
hear”. 
When a squirrel rushed through the bamboos and loosened a bunch 
of large leaves which eddied downward, the jungle hen gave her loud, 
strident cackle cut ! cut ! cut ! cut ! cut-dâ-cut exactly asa domestic hen 
announces an ‘egg. In this case it was a startled exclamation of suspi- 
cion, given rapidly and sharply. 
As to their food, BEEBE states them to be graminivorous on the 
whole, but also fond of the larvae and eggs of white ants or termites, so 
that they will go to considerable trouble to scratch and peg away the 
hard earthen tunnels and mounds of these insects, to expose the nurse- 
ries with their abundant tenants. 
As a sign of pure blood BEEBE considers, as many others, the low- 
hung tail, Of this he says: 
