June 20—Walking in the pouring rain the other morning I met with a curious adventure. Soaked to the skin, gaily sloshing through the slippery paths in knee-high gumboots, I suddenly found myself walking exactly behind a cock Pheasant. I have never previously enjoyed the sight of a cock Pheasant seen exactly from the rear: the long tail disappears and the whole profile is- foreshortened in the most ridiculous manner. This bird looked exactly like a miniature man wearing a very loud check golf-suit... at the same time having the bad taste to wear a high white collar and a funny sports hat created by the backward curve of his "ears": his whole appearance was so absurd that I almost burst out laughing: the fat little body bobbed up and down with self importance...and would not leave the ground although I followed within twenty fect of it. Determined to make him fly I followed him through reeds and every wet obstacle offered by the rain-soaked country... and after ten minutes of this the Pheasant was last seen running (now in a crouched position) into a thickly-set nursery of young trees. So I left him; and on my homeward way in the car found my right leg itching terribly inside the boot (I could only give it a thump with my fist and drive on hoping for the best). At home T found the leg swollen up with about five large bites—and a dead horse-fly in the bottom of the boot. I sent the deceased fly to The Professor for identification... and gather from his reply that I ought to regard it as a kind of a compliment to have been bitten by "a blood-sucking horse-fly with spotted wings (Haematopota s'nensis)" because it is not the common horse-fly of China (Tabanus). The
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.