GAME PROTECTION IN INDIA 275 



In this connexion the 1912 Act would appear to require 

 amendment, and severe penalties be enacted on the per- 

 petrators of the cold-blooded and diabolical butchery of 

 inoffensive animals which annually takes place throughout 

 the country all the year round. For these men are no 

 respecters of seasons nor of age or sex. Male and female, 

 old and young, all are treated with the same terrible callous- 

 ness. A man working a lame horse is taken up by the police 

 in England and fined by a magistrate. And rightly so. 

 And yet far greater barbarities are perpetrated daily in 

 India without notice. 



It is very necessary to stop the slaughter at present 

 carried out by the native shikari, soldier and poacher 

 during the close seasons, the proceeds of which slaughter in 

 flesh, skins and horns finds a ready sale in the bazaars. 

 Stop this traffic and you bring to an end one of the great 

 incentives to kill. 



Sub-sections 4 (i) and (2) deal with penalties. In a 

 country like India it has always seemed to me that there 

 should be two scales of fines. Fifty or a hundred rupees 

 should be a sufficient deterrent to the poaching native 

 shikari. But would it stop the more wealthy European 

 shikari who, for instance, wanted to be able to say that he 

 had shot a bison and sooner than go back empty-handed 

 would risk the penalty and shoot a female ? I had an 

 instance of this kind of thing in Chota Nagpur myself. 

 A wealthy so-called sportsman came up with a permit to 

 shoot and seated in a machan had the animals in the forest 

 driven past him and shot a cow bison and a three-week-old 

 calf ! The penalty did not stop him and he hoped by 

 bluffing to be allowed to keep his spoils even if he had to pay 

 the, to him, small fine. 



Section 5 empowers the magistrate to confiscate all illicit 

 spoils captured and should be fearlessly and unwaveringly 

 put in force. 



Section 7 empowers a Local Government to permit in the 

 interests of scientific research a departure from the rules 

 in force both in and out of the close season for any specified 

 animal or bird or classes of such. A short decade ago this 

 would have been hailed, and rightly hailed, as an example 

 of broad-minded statesmanship. Now, however, the per- 

 mission will require to be jealously watched ; for the last 

 few years have witnessed startling developments as a result 



