A peculiarity in the sombre sal jungles is the scarcity of wild fruit.  At home the woods are filled with berries and fruit-bearing bushes.  Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits?  You might walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild fig, or the sickly mhowa.

There are indeed very few jungle fruits that I have ever come across.  There is one acid sort of plum called the Omra, which makes a good preserve, but is not very nice to eat raw.  The Gorkah is a small red berry, very sweet and pleasant, slightly acid, not unlike a red currant in fact, and with two small pips or stones.  The Nepaulese call it Bunchooree.  It grows on a small stunted-looking bush, with few branches, and a pointed leaf, in form resembling the acacia leaf, but not so large.

The Glaphur is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard, and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled potato.  The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds embedded in a gummy viscid substance.  The taste is exactly like an almond, and it forms a pleasant mouthful if one is thirsty.

Travelling one day along one of the glades I have mentioned as dividing the strips of jungle, I was surprised to see a man before me in a field of long stubble, with a cloth spread over his head, and two sticks projecting in front at an obtuse angle to his body, forming horn-like projections, on which the ends of his cloth twisted spirally, were tied.  I thought from his curious antics and movements, that he must be mad, but I soon discovered that there was method in his madness.  He was catching quail.  The quail are often very numerous in the stubble fields, and the natives adopt very ingenious devices for their capture.  This was one I was now witnessing.  Covering themselves with their cloth as I have described, the projecting ends of the two sticks representing the horns, they simulate all the movements of a cow or bull.  They pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this al fresco comedy.  I have laughed often at some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry.  When they see you watching them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw you into convulsions of laughter.