258 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



elsewhere, will be considered later. We will at present 

 confine ourselves to the protection of game animals. 



The most natural way to afford an asylum to animals 

 which are in danger of extinction from overshooting, is by 

 the closure of tracts of country of varying size to all shooting 

 in order to allow them unrestricted rest to breed and increase 

 in numbers. In this manner the recognized Game Sanctuary 

 came into being and such exist in India, America, Africa 

 and elsewhere. 



In India we are only in the initial stages of this form of 

 protection, and much yet remains to be done. By the 

 placing on the statutes of the " Wild Birds and Animals 

 Protection Act of 1912," to be dealt with shortly, the 

 Government of India practically placed the whole respon- 

 sibility for the protection of the game in the country in the 

 hands of the Local Governments. 



On October 24th, 1911, 1 read a paper before the Zoological 

 Society of London^ entitled "Game Sanctuaries and Game 

 Protection in India." Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell, C.B.E., 

 F.R.S., Secretary of the Society, took this paper as the 

 basis of portions of his Presidential Address before the 

 Zoological Section of the British Association at Dundee 

 in the following year. I shall refer to this Address later. 



My paper dealt with the subject under various sections, 

 portions of which I propose to briefly deal with here. The 

 New Act of the Government of India received the assent 

 of the Governor-General in Council in September, 1912. 

 My paper only dealt with the draft Act which has little 

 affinity with the measure actually passed into law. 



If it is desired to obtain some idea of the abundance of 

 game animals in India in the past, one has only to read some 

 of the sporting chronicles of old-time shikaris. What a 

 glorious shikar country it was in the days of yore, and what 

 a royal time our fathers and grandfathers had of it ! 



To mention but a few of these classic volumes : Forsyth's 

 Highlands of Central India, Sterndale's Seonee or Camp Life 

 in the Satpuras, Sanderson's Thirteen Years' Sport among the 

 Wild Beasts of India, Simson's Sport in Eastern Bengal, 

 Kinloch's Large Game Shooting in Thibet, the Himalaya, and 



^ Published in Proceedings Zool. Soc. Lond., p. 23. March, 1912. 



