Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/98

78 some low roost, and, when relieved, commence another excursion, or perchance sit and watch there for its prey. Its forward flight is easy, low, and silent, but very effective in evolution when exertion is required to capture such nimble game as mice, which constitute its ordinary food.

It frequently whips off insects from the stalks of standing grain, after the manner of the Brahmani Cheel or Halioetus(!) Pondicerianus; and this feat is, of course, accomplished on the wing. I have also seen the Chanwa pursue cuckoos and sparrows with uncommon energy, but I never witnessed it strike a bird in the air. Like the type of Circus, however, the Chanwa doubtless can, and sometimes does, seize its feathered prey on the wing. So that its manners are, upon the whole, sufficiently Fissirostral : perhaps as much so as its Raptorial affinities will admit of. Analogies and affinities are very fine abstract terms, which the quiet Orientals would be puzzled to deal with. But, as these words really import no more than remote and near resemblance of form and habits, one can hardly resist the presumption that (strongly as habits illustrate form), so observant and ancient a people as the Indians have probably reached some general conclusions as to the true relations of the animate beings of their own country, such as may be, oft-times, more worthy of a philosophical attention than the conclusions upon the same matters that have been elaborated in Europe out of dry skins, by dint of inference from structure so seen, to habits wholly unknown.

Now, it is remarkable enough that the people have, for ages past, been wont to approximate the Slant to the Harriers, but still without confounding the two. Is there any warrant for this approximation? It would seem so : for, both are twilight questers, flying in the same manner and seeking the same prey (mice). Both have large eyes and ears, soft plumage, long wings, wide gapes, large nostrils nearly hid by radiating hairs, bills much compressed and feeble before the cere, but furnished with a long sharp hook and an accipatrine festoon. In several of these common attributes there is an equal and conspicuous tendency towards the Strigine model, which tendency seems to give fresh authority to that approximation of the two groups to each other, so long familiar to the people of India, though bat yesterday, and still dimly, perceived by the towering ken of European science!