The morning call., 1892-01-07
THE ADJUTANT.
A Scayenger Bird That Is Pre-
served by the Law in Calcutta.

During the months that the ad1utant
lives in Calcutta it is interesting to watch
him. He appoints himself chief scavengeT
of q certain house or houses and has first
choice of the contents Of the dust-bins,
which each householder is required to de-
posit outside his gate at daybreak," says
writer for Longman's Magazine. 'The adj
jutants operations may be more easily
imagined than described, whilst the pariah
dogs of the quarter and bevy OF attendant
crows look on till his lOrdshiD is satisfied
with the BONES bouches that he picks out
with his sharp beak. losses into the air and
swallows, until his stomach becomes SO full
that he is obliged TO take 4 little walk round
to let matters settle themselves l regret
that l have been recently deprived OF
story about the vOracity of adjutants that
had been believed by me for many years. L
had been told that Mr.. K. had seen an adJu-
tant walk quietly along wall TO sleeping
cat, which it pierced with its beak, tossed
up in the air and caught III its mouth.
" But | recently met MIR. r., and he tells
me- that he aid not see the adjutant swallow
the cat but that his friend Mr.. 5. said that
he had seen an adJutant pick up and s@al-
low a live kitten. Now that is very diner
ent thing and is more likely to he true than
the story about the cat For kitten may
be about the same size as a rat, ana nave
often seen the adjutants catch and swallow
live rats At the stables OF the house OF a
friend of mine the native servants used al
most every night to catch live rats Ia traps.
When the morning came the men used TO
carry the traps out on the open madam,
attended by three or four adJutants. who
very we'll knew what treat was IN store Tor
them. With our binoculars we could see
from the house the poor rats let loose and
dash off at their best pace toward the
stables. But grim adjutant, with his long
strides and outStretched wings, soon over
took the rat, tossed him In the air, and
swallowed him. Occasionally a very smart
rat would double under the leading adju-
tants legs; but the rat had little chance OF
escape. for il it evaded one pursuer 1t only
ran into the mouth of another.
THE adjutant may be called a sacred
bird but, as this epithet might be mlsun-
derstoOd as if 1t applied to Hndoo myth
ology, ! must explain that it is consecrated
TO municipal duty, and IS sanctitiad by the
protection Of the municipal law. ANY one
who kills an adjutant in Calcutta is punish
able by a fine of a gold mOhuT, or 49, |
never found this law in the statute book
any more than | ever saw that fabulous
coin, the gold mOhuT, in its original gold.
But there is no English magistrate in Cal
cutta who would hesitate to impose fine OF
gold mohur on any one convicted of kill
ing an adjutant. One Of my old cOntem-
pOraTieS in the old college Of Fort William
was so fined, although he had killed the ad-
jutant In his father garden, and his father
was one Of the Judges of the Chief Court Of
Justice. There used to be tradition that
the British soldiers in the barracks of Fort
William once blew up an Rdjutant by in
duciDg II to swallow a marr0w-bOne in
which there was a charge of gunpOwder
and slow-burnlnk fuse, but hardly be-
leve it.
"A similar but perfectly true story was,
however, within my own cOgnzance, and it
occurred at the ChinSuIah Barracks when
the old Twentv-ninth Regiment was quar-
tered there. The soldiers. after, their din
ner, got two InarrOw-b bones and tied them
together with a stout string about twenty
yards long. The marrow-boDes were then
thrown out separately to two eXpeCtant
adjutants One bird seized and swallowed
one bone. and the other bird caught and got
outside (as the Yankees say of the other
bone. The TWO birds then flew up toward
their usual prrches on the barrack roof but
as they few apart the string frightened, and
as they pulled against one another and
neither would part with his bone they
finally came Topping to the ground, to the
great edification Of the soldiers. When tie
two birds were on the ground there was
severe tug-of-war between them. until at
last he string broke, and each Of them few
off triumphantly to digest its bone and the
yards OF string attached t. it ut its leisure"