X DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



No, the jungle may be, and in parts is, the happy play- 

 ground and hunting-ground of the tiger, but he does not 

 play or usually hunt in the open in the daytime, and he is 

 precious difficult to find at any hour of the twenty-four. 



And with the other jungle denizens — that wonderful 

 sagacious beast the elephant, the shy gaur or Indian bison, 

 the fierce and treacherous buffalo, the rhinoceros, now so 

 near extinction, the bears and leopards and deer and 

 antelope, they are not to be found in the jungle cooped up 

 cheek by jowl as we have become familiar with them in 

 our childhood or maturer years at a Zoo. 



Without a knowledge of their habits and characteristics 

 you may pass months, even years, in the jungles without 

 seeing, save by accident, pelt, horn or hoof. 



Nor to many does the great fascination of the jungle 

 reside in its animal life either as sportsman or zoologist. 



In what then does it reside ? 



It is difficult to say. The jungle is so intangible, and 

 there is probably to be found in each one of us that instinct 

 which still survives, no matter how deeply it may be over- 

 laid by present-day civilization, the instinct which takes us 

 back to the time when the world was young and its 

 inhabitants few ; to the days when the greater portion 

 of the land surface of the Globe consisted of pathless jungles 

 against which our ancestors waged unremitting war, and 

 amongst which they lived and died. 



Most Anglo-Indians (of the Services, at least) know the 

 feeling of rehef, of relaxation from care and worry, which 

 pervades the mind when, the Station left behind, one sits 

 down to the first dinner in camp. The log fire burning and 

 crackling merrily outside, the subdued buzz of talk from 

 the servants' lines, the whinnying of the picketed ponies 

 or the shrill voices of the syces raised in execration when a 

 biting or kicking match commences, the dull rumbling of 

 the elephants engaged on their fodder, resembling distant 

 thunder ; the great columns of the trees forming a back- 

 ground to the camp, on to which the camp-fires cast fitful 

 shadows, whilst overhead the picture is closed in by the 

 blue-black vault picked out with innumerable jewels and 

 spangled with diamond dust. How pleasant it all is. Are 

 these the delights which make for fascination ? For many, 

 perhaps. For others that indefinable sense of mystery 

 which attaches to the Indian jungle, and to so much else 



