not, even if he would, make a reduction in a year of drought. In brief, the pleasant relations which once existed between landlord and tenant are in many places gone for ever. And Mr George doesn't care. He has spent a vast sum upon valuers, and has collected £1162, which ought to be enough for any rhetorician. Mr George is treating the question of Insurance in the same light-hearted spirit of ignorance in which he treated Land Values. The speech which he delivered a fortnight ago in Whitefield's Tabernacle-an odd place for such an oration-showed that we may expect of him nothing of wisdom and moderation. and moderation. He made the same statements as usual, in the same tone of truculent familiarity. He repeated for the tenth time that the workman will get ninepence worth for fourpence a week. Every one knows that he will get nothing of the sort, but the universal knowledge does not appal Mr George. "Are you surprised," he asks impertinently, "that the Scotsmen of Kilmarnock voted enthusiastically for it? That is not the race to reject 9d. for 4d." Let not Mr George be over-confident. The Scots are not the race to forgive the man who dupes them, and when they discover that the boasted 5d. is not 5d. at all, they will take a proper revenge at the polls. We do not expect accuracy from Mr George, and the rash statements which made up his speech neither surprise nor annoy us. What is of far worse omen is the tone of petulance which the Chancellor has adopted. The framer of the absurd Budget of 1909 still demands our faith in a bill, not because it is wise or beneficent, but because he is its author. He appears to think his own honour is engaged. Good or bad the Bill shall pass, because he has said it will pass. The profit of the people is nothing to him. Economy is nothing to him. He refuses to discuss his proposals, or to combat objections. "The Bill is going through this year. I will fight__it through, or I will fall." For this bombastic piece of melodrama there is no excuse at all. A vast number of Englishmen would rejoice at nothing so much as at Mr George's fall. But it is not Mr George, it is England, that will suffer by the Insurance Bill, and he would be better employed in attempting to defend his handiwork than in advertising his sensibility. Unluckily there is no chance of reform for him. He has listened too often to the sound of his own voice, and like Mr Gladstone, intoxicated with his own verbosity, he believes that he can do nothing wrong. May his awakening be not too long delayed! IT is about ten of a fine the verandah seeking for the October day in the plains of source of the sound. With Upper India. Out of doors the eyes unaccustomed to the glare power of the sun is asserting this is not easy to detect until itself, but the hours after day- the vibrant "krach-krach" has break have already begun to be been several times repeated. marked by a distinct freshness. Ah, there it is now. Right This morning a gracious dew overhead is the spot the glistened on the lawn whereon "nubes sonora " which resolves a little blue-and-white water- itself on inspection into a conwagtail, after an absence of gregation of fifty, sixty, or many months, was seeking his seventy specks, representing subsistence, while regarding the the great slate-coloured birds master of the house with all the of whom we hope to see more confidence of an old friend. at closer quarters hereafter. White filmy cobwebs glittered For the moment we hail their on the grass and among the appearance with unfeigned low garden-bushes. The air delight. Year after year this itself was not the same atmos- epiphany comes about phere as that of a week ago. exactly the same way-someClear and light, it had brought where between the 1st and with it this morning a sense of the 31st October bringing physical exhilaration to which with it a certain message of dwellers in the plains had long encouragement and good cheer. been strangers. The Joint "Krach-krach-krnakkul," that Magistrate during his early ride has joyfully noted these signs of the seasons, and is now waiting breakfast with a new appetite, when suddenly across the cawing of the crows outside and the chattering of the minahs there comes to his ear a far off but unmistakable ory Krach-krach-krnakkul. As promptly as the Pigmy warrior our friend is outside in in is, being interpreted, "Here we are back. The rains are over. The cold weather is upon you." And no one ever knew these sagacious birds to be wrong. If they could but impart a little of their faculty to the savants of the Meteorological Office at Simla what strides the limping science of weather prediction would make to be sure. For thousands of years the crane has been an object of to Libya and Ethiopia for win- interest to to humanity. His the region of Scythia resort striking appearance, his resonant cries, and the mysterious regularity of his habits ensured from the earliest times the attention of men. It is to be feared that he also forced himself upon their notice by his appetite. Those who have noticed the ravages that can be made in a field of rice or vetch when a good-sized flock of geese or cranes have been allowed to enjoy a quiet night thereon, can form an idea of the toll that must have been taken from the crops by these hungry birds before the days of firearms. Whereas a single shot sends them flighting off for miles nowadays, in old times no doubt all the shouting of the farmer and his hands would scarcely scarcely move them from one end of a field to the other. At any rate it is certain that the Greeks from the earliest times knew at least as much about the crane as we do now. Not to quote passages from the Iliad downwards, indicating how closely they had observed his habits, what is more surprising is how accurately they had learned where he went when he vanished from their view. The Birds of Aristophanes in enumerating the services they perform for men, claim that by their means the farmer is enabled to tell the moment at In some ways men's powers may have advanced with civilisation: but in observation they have certainly gone back. But the crane has other merits beyond the punctuality of his habits. He is excellent to eat, a fact that was perfectly the pursuit. The first outing appreciated by our forefathers of the season is always a thing in the days when he still nested to look forward to, and if cranein Britain and though in- shooting does not rank high as dividual birds may differ in gunnery, the thought of what this respect, as is the case will happen should one return with almost all wild fowl, a empty handed supplies an roast coolun, whether hot or element of excitement to the cold, is an acceptable addition expedition. Twenty miles out to the sideboard, especially to- of the station there is a large wards the beginning of Novem- tract of waste, low-lying ground, ber, when the resources of the through which runs a chain of Anglo-Indian larder are at what might at this season of their lowest. It was some- the year be taken for lakes, where about this time of year lakes which in March will be that I was commanded by the isolated pools, and by May will lady who then then ruled our have have disappeared altogether. District-in the name, be it This spongy plain, fringed by understood, and person of her autumn and winter crops of all husband to get her a wild kinds, is the favourite haunt of goose to help out a dinner she large flocks of grus communis, had arranged for the ensuing and though it is one thing to week. "But, my dear ma- see these birds even in hundreds dame," I ventured, "I cannot and another thing to get a get you a goose, because the shot at them, there is no place geese have not yet come in." hereabouts where one is more "Well, then, a bustard." "But likely to score. Accordingly the bustard have all gone," I tent, servants, and necessaries say with some relief, for an are sent out by cart early on order to produce a bustard Saturday morning, and after would not be the same thing the day's work is done with as a commission to get a turkey one starts to ride out. There from the poulterer's. "How is a good road the whole way, you young men make difficul- and with a good nag to start ties! on and an ideal covert hack to relieve him halfway, we are in before it is really dark. How good a thing is that first evening of the season in camp. How bright the yellow of the lamp's glow inside the tent: how white the tablecloth, what a whisky and soda is this that our boy has ready for us. Surely Hatch & Hedges must have sent us some of their oldest liqueur by mistake. But something I must have: imagine what the Natives would think if they knew that the Collector could not get a dish of game in his own District." Diffidently I suggest the possibility of a coolun, for the merits of this bird are not sufficiently known nowadays; but the proposal finds unexpected favour, and it is soon arranged that the approaching week-end is to be devoted to And what a dinner produces itself subsequently: one might have fared worse in Piccadilly. And was there ever a more luxurious bed, though it is but an affair of poles and canvas and travels in a mean-looking bag? Bed, however, is a luxury in which one will do well to be frugal, for much depends on being in good time for the cranes next morning. Accordingly we rise while it is dark and are ready to take the field with the first grey of dawn. Unluckily the shikari is absent. An attack of the fever that is always abroad at this season has kept him at home: but the resident Native official has provided two coolies of a caste that devotes itself to bird-snaring, and who know the locality thoroughly, to act as gun-bearers and guides. In the brief morning twilight we set off, now along alleys in the tall crops which throw off showers of moisture, now across newly sown fields whose clods are glutinous with the heavy morning dew. Soon the harsh cries of innumerable water - birds apprise us that we are nearing our ground. A heavy white mist hangs over the plain, which is all in favour of the operations in hand. Presently, as we cautiously skirt the plain, a small isolated party of cranes is viewed on a flat spit of ground running down to the lake, in a position which offers a fair chance of a stalk. A stack of straw, 150 yards from where the birds are, provides a good basis of operations; then a deepish artificial ditch, which later on will serve for irrigation purposes, to conduct the water of the lake with the aid of basket-lifts to the adjoining fields, affords a means of approach to within forty or fifty yards of the party. We are soon mustered behind the stack. The coolies are left there in ambush, and taking the gun the crane-killer starts on his crawl. It is a muddy but an easy business, and he is soon arrived at the nearest point to the prey. Here he pauses in concealment to get his breath for the run in that will gain him a few yards, but even while he is securely admiring the great birds, which look doubly large through the mist, there is a sudden croak of alarm, a flapping of wings, and they are off before a man could pick up a gun and get in a cartridge. The disaster seems unaccountable, until he looks behind him and sees the two coolies, who had been left behind the stack, coming up across the open with fluttering garments as phlegmatically as if they were going out to weed their fields. Here was a singular instance of the stunting effects of over-specialisation. These men belonged by birth to the caste of fowlers in whom hereditary aptitude has developed a wonderful expertness. If it had been a question of walking into a tank, stalking up to a flock of ducks, the head covered with an inverted |