Rice is the staple food, but some relish, even if it be only jungle leaves boiled with chilies and salt, is always eaten with it. Meat is preferred if obtainable, but the Lhota will eat most things at a pinch. His diet includes the meat of all domestic animals and most wild animals and birds, fish, both fresh and dried, bee and hornet grubs, large spiders, a kind of beetle, white ants, cultivated plants and innumerable jungle leaves and berries. Certain things are forbidden, but villages near the plains are much less particular in this respect than those on the inner ranges. The general reason why certain animals and birds are not eaten is either that they are obviously unclean or because they are thought likely to impart their properties to the eater or to his children. Generally speaking old people can eat things which young people cannot, because it does not much matter what happens to them and in any case they will have no more children. Tigers and leopards are absolutely forbidden to all because they eat men. Leopard cats can be eaten by old people who no longer cultivate. Were a young man to eat it he would get poor crops. Wild dog if eaten causes a raging thirst. Phiyosao of Akuk ate only a little of the skin of one, but he had to leave the village school because he could never sit through a lesson without going out for a drink. Whoever eats or even kills an otter will never be able to get his fields to burn properly. [100] None but very old people may touch, much less eat, either the big or little flying squirrel (Petaurista yunnanensis and Pteromys aboniger). Anyone who does so will frequently be guilty of indecent behaviour with the opposite sex of his own clan. Several kinds of birds are forbidden. The Large Streaked Spiderhunter (Arachnothera magna) is only eaten by very old people “because it is such a very funny-looking bird, and has such a very long beak.” The local species of minivet (Pericrocotus brevirostris) is forbidden to all because the cocks are supposed to have got their scarlet markings from being splashed with human blood. The Velvet-fronted Blue Nuthatch (Sitta frontalis) goes about in little flocks and is such a confiding little bird that if one is killed the rest of the flock will wait near till they are killed too. Therefore if a man were to eat one, one death in his household would be followed by a series of deaths. A solitary old man or woman can, of course, eat this bird with impunity. The Whitecapped Redstart (Chimarrhornis leucocephalus) and Whiteheaded Babbler (Gampsorhynchus rufulus) are not eaten because they would cause the eater to become grey-headed. Parrots and crow-tits (Parodoxornis) are not eaten because of the shape of their beaks. The eater’s children would be everlastingly pinching their friends. Scimitar babblers (Pomatorhinus) if eaten would make the eater unable to remember his dreams and so deprive him of an important guide in life. The clan of anyone who ate a