THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 179° 
concert, not at all like the dingo, but a rising and falling 
note between a harsh laugh and a sharp call. At Bangalore, 
west of Madras, the country is very rich, and the public 
gardens are extensive and well kept. The Jack fruit is very 
common in the gardens, with its immense fruits growing up 
the main trunk. 
Snakes are plentiful, and whenever we went out at night 
the servants carried lanterns, and no one would cross over 
the grass for fear of the Cobra and Russell’s Viper, the latter 
being dreaded quite as much as King Cobra. In Ceylon, 
Sir William Twynem showed mé an iron walking-stick, with 
two loose iron rings, which he said in old days, when roads 
were few, every traveller carried at night, rattling the rings 
to frighten away the snakes in the grass. 
About Pusa one always seemed to hear the ‘‘fever bird,” 
a cuckoo (Cuculus micropterus), that usually perches on 
the fig-trees in the compound, and calls out at intervals of 
about a minute with a most monotonous harsh note. 
One of the striking things in India is the wonderful num- 
ber of different kinds of cattle one sees, all shapes and sizes 
in all kinds of carts and drays. Cattle are universal beasts: 
of burden in India: the mule and the donkey are left behind 
at Port Said and Cairo, and the camel also, for in any of 
the parts of India I traversed it was quite exceptional to see. 
one. The elephant is seldom seen on the roads. 
In Ceylon I did not have much time to study natural his- 
tory generally, but everyone knows the little house crows 
(Corvus splendens), with their shining, glossy, black plum- 
age, and familiar bold habits of coming into the houses. 
They are common around Colombo, and are found all over 
the island. The manager of the Galle Face Hotel has a 
notice to visitors in the bedrooms: ‘Do not leave any small 
articles of jewellery on your dressing-table, as the crows 
may carry them off.’”” In the native plantatiéns along the 
railway line to Kandy, one often sees white and black pots 
stuck up on posts to frighten these birds away.” eee 
At the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradenyia, I saw num-" 
bers of the Leaf Phasma (PAyllum athanysus) in captivity, 
feeding upon Mango leaves. At Jaffra, in the north of’ 
Ceylon, the country is covered with cocoanut and palymera: 
palms. The latter is the one they tap and use the juice’to 
drink as ‘‘toddy.’’ At a fishing village we stopped ‘ata’ 
shed, under which there were a number of turtles turned’ 
over on their backs, the most pitiable lot of creatures’ Il) saw’ 
