enjoy the moisture of the cool, wet sand by the water's edge, and sit with outspread wings in the sunlight daintily quenching their thirst. Jerdon must have revelled in the abundance of tropical nature on the Choultry Plain. The trees and bushes are full of feathered folk; and every flower-bed has its butterflies, giant black and red, graceful green and bronze, and tiny trembling blue. The coarse grass of the compounds teems with insect-life in spite of the hungry birds, the seven sisters, for ever hopping and babbling and feasting. Upon the scarlet poinsettia the black robin sings, keeping a watchful eye on that particular piece of the garden which it has appropriated to itself and its family as a hunting-ground. Let another dare to poach a fat grub on its preserve and the song is hushed, the robin is at him with a sharp warning not to trespass on other folks' land. The birds have their regular beats and keep to them. Great is the racket when those preserves are encroached upon by strangers.
After leaving Egmore and Nungumbaukum the Cooum circles round Chintadripettah, the old weaving town of the Company. It was founded by the merchants (1734) for their weavers, spinners, painters, washers, and dyers. The site was chosen on account of the protection offered by the river which more than half surrounds it. In its earlier days Chintadripettah may possibly have been pleasanter than it is now. In picturesqueness it lacks nothing. The road between the river and the village still gives beautiful scenery of wood and water. There are two or three old garden-houses standing back among the trees, with here and there a massive arch and handsome pillar that bespeak better times. The phosphates bred in the bed of the Cooum impregnate the air and drive the fastidious away. The same reason prevents the wanderer from lingering in the Napier Park, a small ornamental piece of public ground at the entrance of
