the Khasi method. Games they have none, and there
are no jovial archery meetings like those of the Khasis. The Lynngam
methods of hunting are setting spring guns and digging pitfalls
for game. The people say that now the Government and the Siem of
Nongstoin have prohibited both of these methods of destroying game,
they no longer employ them. But I came across a pitfall for deer not
long ago in the neighbourhood of a village in the Lynngam country. The
people declared it to be a very old one; but this I very much doubt,
and I fear that these objectionable methods of hunting are still
used. The Lynngams fish to a small extent with nets, but their idea
of fishing, _par excellence_, is poisoning the streams, an account
of which has already been given in this monograph. The Lynngams are
omnivorous feeders, they may be said to eat everything except dogs,
snakes, the _huluk_ monkey, and lizards. They like rice, when they
can get it; for sometimes the out-turn of their fields does not
last them more than a few months. They then have to fall back on
Jobstears and millet. They eat arums largely, and for vegetables
they cook wild plantains and the young shoots of bamboos and cane
plants. The Lynngams are divided up into exogamous clans in the same
manner as the Khasis. The clans are overgrown families. The Lynngams
have some stories regarding the founders of these clans, of which the
following is a specimen:--"A woman was asleep under a _sohbar_ tree
in the jungle, a flower from which fell on her, and she conceived
and bore a female child who was the ancestress of the Nongsohbar
clan." Some of the stories of the origins of other clans do not bear
repeating. There do not appear to be any hypergamous groups. As
with the Khasis, it is a deadly sin to marry any one belonging to
your own _kur_, or clan. Unlike the Khasis, however, a Lynngam can
marry two sisters at a time. The Lynngam marriages are arranged by
_ksiangs_, or go-betweens much in the same way as Khasi marriages;
but the ritual observed is less elaborate, and shows a mixture of
Khasi and Garo customs (see section III.). The Lynngams intermarry
with the Garos. It appears that sometimes the parents of girls exact
bride-money, and marriages by capture have been heard of. Both of these
customs are more characteristic of the Bodo tribes of the plains than
of the Khasis. There are no special birth customs, as with the Khasis,
except that when the umbilical cord falls a fowl is s