the birds from which the osprey plumes are obtained. One sees, too, many
kinds of eagle and hawk. In fact, the ornithologist can never be dull in
this country.

Wild animals I had few opportunities to observe, although a mongoose at
Raisina gave me a very amusing ten minutes. At Raisina, also, the
jackals came close to the house at night; and on an early morning ride
in a motorcar to Agra we passed a wolf, and a little later were most
impudently raced and outdistanced by a blackbuck, who, instead of
bolting into security at the sight or sound of man, ran, or rather,
advanced--for his progress is mysterious and magical--beside us for some
forty yards and then,--with a laugh, put on extra speed (we were doing
perhaps thirty miles an hour) and disappeared ahead. All about Muttra we
dispersed monkeys up the trees and into the bushes as we approached.
Next to the parrots it is the monkeys that most convince the traveller
that he is in a strange tropical land. And the flying foxes. Nothing is
more strange than a tree full of these creatures sleeping pendant by
day, or their silent swift black movements by night.

I saw no snakes wild, but in the Bacteriological Laboratory at Parel in
Bombay, which Lt.-Col. Glen Liston controls with so much zeal and
resourcefulness, I was shown the process by which the antidotes to snake
poisoning are prepared, for dispersion through the country. A cobra or
black snake is released from his cage and fixed by the attendant with a
stick pressed on his neck a little below the head. The snake is then
firmly and safely held just above this point between the finger and
thumb, and a tumbler, with a piece of flannel round its edge, is
proffered to it to bite. As the snake bites, a clear yellow fluid, like
strained honey in colour and thickness, flows into the glass from the
poison fangs. This poison is later injected in small doses into the