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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1902.
and unseemly, while those of the jay are very beautiful and elastic, and similarly it has befallen the peacock and the flamingo!! But the promise thus undone ruptured their friendly association !! (Æsop's fable of a jackdaw on presenting its peacock feathers was pecked and expelled by peacocks is somewhat analogous.)
Scientific Element. From childhood I wandered abroad "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," but while I so. journed at Nagpore I suffered a bitter persecution from people through their mistaken ideas. During this period of many years the brute world of birds and beasts appointed & small number of individuals from among them to wait upon and serve and please me, even with their lives. But mankind were too awful for large wild birds, antelopes and foxes to approach me, while I, fearing too much Government law, could not dwell in woods. Some tiny wild birds, smaller than the common house-sparrow, approached me at my own house, which is in the centre and most crowded part of Sitabuldi, a suburb of Nagpore. These beautiful, little, and rare wild birds were much troubled by people, but they persevered, their duty being above their lives, and one pair of them, building a nest near my pillow on the second floor, succeeded in rearing a generation. The male parent is jet black with shot colours, while the female is simply whitish gray. Their offspring are quite unlike their parents, the young male being like & male house-sparrow in colour, which is a mixture of black, white and reddish in variegation, and the female is like a female house-sparrow, but they have relieved their parents in their dangerous duty and their parents have quite disappeared,
Their assuming foreign colours may be to befriend the house-sparrows and not to appear strange to people, but the former have ir.cessantly tronbled and pecked them, so that they seem to abandon their present appearance and embrace the colours of their parents !! At present, the young male, though not altogether changed, bears some of its sire's colour on the back, while all below it continues like a male house-sparrow, which it altogether resembled a couple of months before. The new generation dare not build a nest close to me owing to the great troubles in the previous generation, as they are continually vered by the sparrows which are larger and stronger; and also they have seen that even now people expel settled beehives and drive away other fellow.birds from my tree which overhange my little house.
Also, their duty of attending on me is becomming lax day by day. Now they remain present only until 9 in the morning. But formerly their parents remained present day and night, going away by turns only for & few minutes for their food, which mostly consists of pollen and honey of flowers which they pick up with their over-aninch-long and hooked beaks.
These little wild birds can bring no food for me, but they have attended on me by the sympathetic orders from the government of their brute world, which has served me during many years and from generation to generation, and this service will not cease for some years more.
Such is a true and faithful account as it bears on the science of Natural Philosophy. Nagpore, Sitabuldi,
B. ROYDU, 9126 November 1901.
Maba Raja.
NOTES AND QUERIES. HUMAN SACRIFICE AND SERPENT WORSHIP. | Settlement, but the brief abstract of his crime
U Badkha, son of U Maluk, of the Village of is as follows:- Prisoner belongs to a seot known Kyndiar (Nongthym mni) in the Pergunnah 25 88 Rithlen, supposed to possess or keep in their Villages in Khyein in the District of the Khasia houses a thlen or demon serpent, which is and Jaintia Hille, was convicted before Col. W. S. propitiated by offerings of the blood, nails, Clarke, Deputy Commissioner and Sessions or hair of human beings. The murder was Judge of murder on 28th March, 1882, and committed to bring wrath on the house (P of Bentenced to transportation for life. He in due an enemy). course arrived in Port Blair on 30th November,
The man is further described as a cultivator 1882: and in fullness of time is now about to be
by occupation. "His house or family was susreleased to return in his old age to his native
pected to be Rithlen: his society was avoided country.
as that of a dangerous person." The details of the judgment convicting him are unfortunately not available in the Penal
B. O. TEXPLS.
