while they were well beyond shotgun range.
When flushed from the open the birds nearly always would alight in the
first large tree and sit for a few moments before flying deeper into the
jungle. We caught several hens in our steel traps, and one morning at the
edge of a swamp I shot a jungle fowl and a woodcock with a "right and left"
as they flushed together.

We were at the Nam-ting camp at the beginning of the mating season for the
jungle fowl. It is said that they brood from January to April according to
locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs under a bamboo
clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have been scratched together
for a nest. The hen announces the laying of an egg by means of a proud
cackle, and the chicks themselves have the characteristic "peep, peep,
peep" of the domestic birds. After the breeding season the beautiful red
and gold neck hackles of the male sometimes are molted and replaced by
short blackish feathers.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the cocks are polygamous,
but our observations tend to show that they are. We never saw more than one
male in a flock and in only one or two instances were the birds in pairs.
The cocks are inveterate fighters like the domestic birds and their long
curved spurs are exceedingly effective weapons.

We set a trap for a leopard on a hill behind the Nam-ting River camp and on
the second afternoon it contained a splendid polecat. This animal is a
member of the family Mustelidae which includes mink, otter, weasels,
skunks, and ferrets, and with its brown body, deep yellow throat, and long
tail is really very handsome. Polecats inhabit the Northern Hemisphere and
are closely allied to the ferret which so often is domesticated and used in
hunting rats and rabbits. We found them to be abundant in the low valleys
along the Burma border and often saw them during the day running across
a jungle path or on the lower branches of a tree. The polecat is a
blood-thirsty little beast and kills everything that comes in its way for
the pure love of killing, even when its appetite has been satisfied.

On the third morning we found two civets in the traps. The cook told me
that some animal had stolen a chicken from one of his boxes during the
night and we set a trap only a few yards from our tent on a trail leading
into the grass. The civet was evidently the thief for the cook boxes were
not bothered again.

Inspecting the traps every m