Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/197

Rh Rh you know?" he asked, "Oh! I saw a bee" was the answer given with the greatest nonchalance. On one occasion he found himself close to a swarm of bees. The Kurumba, seeing him hesitate, thrust his stick clean through the swarm, and, with the bare remark " No honey," marched on. The District Forest Officer, when out shooting, had an easy shot at a stag, and missed it. " There," said the Kurumba, pointing to a distant tree, "is your bullet." His trained sense of hearing no doubt enabled him to locate the sound of the bullet striking the tree, and his eyes, following the sound, instantly detected the slight blaze made by the bullet on the bark. The visual acuity of a number of tribes and castes inhabiting the mountains, jungles, and plains, has been determined by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and myself, by means of the Cohn letter E method. And, though the jungle man, who has to search for his food and mark the tracks or traces of wild beasts, undoubtedly possesses a specially trained keenness of vision for the exigencies of his primitive life, our figures show that, as regards ordinary visual acuity, he has no advantage over the more highly civilised classes. "The Kurumbas of the Mysore forests," Mr. Theobald writes, "make fire by friction. They follow the same method as the Todas, as described by Mr. Thurston, but never use the powdered charcoal in the cavity of the horizontal piece of wood which is held down by their feet, or by a companion. The fine brown powder, formed during the rotation of the longer vertical piece, gives sufficient tinder, which soon ignites, and is then placed on a small piece of cotton rag, rolled loosely, and gently blown until it is ignited. The vertical stick is held between the palms, and has a reciprocal motion, by the palms being moved in opposite directions, at the same