amboo strips or threads. In texture and pliability these hats are said
to even surpass the genuine "Panamas," are absolutely impervious to
rain, and can be produced at a much lower cost.

The Looshais killed pigs, and even tigers, by ingeniously setting
poisoned arrows in the woods, which were released by the animals
pressing on a string. One of my coolies was unfortunate enough to be
shot and killed in this way.

Growing on decayed tree stumps I frequently found a saprophyte
(_hymenophallus_), much larger than its English representative, indeed a
monster in comparison, and possessing a vile and most odious smell, yet
attractive to certain depraved insects.

I made a very fine collection of butterflies, moths and beetles, which,
however, was entirely destroyed by worms or ants during its passage to
England. The magnificent Atlas moth was common in Sylhet and Cachar.
What an extraordinarily beautiful creature it is, sometimes so large as
to cover a dinner-plate. I never was privileged to see it fly. It seemed
to be always in a languid or torpid condition.

Thunderstorms occur almost daily during the wet season. By lightning I
lost several people. In one case, whilst standing watching a man remove
seedlings from a nursery bed, standing indeed immediately behind and
close to him, there came a thrilling flash of lightning. It shook myself
as well as several women who stood by. The man in front of me, who had
been sitting on his haunches with a steel-ribbed umbrella over him,
remained silent and still. At last I called on him to continue his work
and pulled back the umbrella to see his face. He was stone dead.
Examination showed a small blackish spot where the steel rib had rested
and conveyed the fatal shock.

The approach of the daily rainstorm, usually about noon, was a
remarkable sight. Immense fan-shaped, thunderous-looking clouds would
come rolling up, billow upon billow, travelling at great speed and
accompanied by terrific wind. A flash of lightning and a crashing peal
of thunder and the deluge began, literally a deluge. The rainfall
averaged about 180 inches in seven months. At Cherrapunji, in the Kassia
Hills, within sight of my place and only about twenty miles distant, the
rainfall was and is the greatest in the world, no other district
approaching it in this respect, viz., averaging per annum 450 inches;
greatest recorded over 900 inches; and there is a record of _one_ month,
July, of a fall of nearly 400 i