BOOK NOTICE. 1 5o 



The finest gazelle horns the present writer ever saw were reported by the 

 owner to have come from near Kolhapur, and to be 16 inches long, and looked 

 it ; but were hung too high to be measured. 



To return to our traveller. He went from Etawah to Calcutta without anv 

 adventure worth noting; except perhaps fche pangs he seems to have felt at seeing 

 seven score monkeys fed in Benares, whereof he might not skin so much as one ; 

 and a disappointment in the Taj Mahal of Agra. He got to Madras in the middle 

 of the famine, ami moralised quaintly upon the Relief operations. "The natives 

 look upon the British occupancy of their country as a punishment inflicted upon 

 them by the gods for past misdeeds # * * * fj ie y ^j better pruy 

 for their gods to punish them some more in that way." He further approved highly 

 of the Madras Museum, and especially of its stuffed fishes. 



Madras, however, was no place for him, an 1 he went, naturally enough, to the 

 Nilgiris, where he found that " every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." He 

 did, however, get introduced to the sambar, bison, and elephant at home, and 

 thought that the last was " the most stupid animal he ever tried to approach. '' 

 This opinion, based upon the conduct of a single herd, he afterwards saw reason 

 to modify considerably, and eventually came to the conclusion, that the elephant is 

 much cleverer than the dog. He also was thanked by a Hindoo for a kindness 

 and doubts whether " any Anglo-Indian will believe it really occurred ;" from 

 which it will be perceived that Mr. Hornaday's acquaintance with the featherless 

 bipeds of India was limited to specimens hardly worth preserving as types. Fur- 

 ther on he " is not ashamed to say that he hates the gentle Hindu" 



It is to be regretted that a writer evidently intelligent and energetic should 

 permit himself such a license of expression about a set of people with whom he 

 could not converse even in Hindustani; on the strength of his acquaintance with 

 a few low-caste servants and hunters, who, upon the whole, seem to have served 

 him fairly well. 



After the Nilgiris, Mr. Hornaday shot in the Auamalai Hills with great success ; 

 but his shooting was much like that of the " Old Forest Ranger," the " Old 

 Shikari" (whom he suspects, as some other people do, of having had a very 

 slippery foot-rule) and other great Nimrods. It is well descrihed, but there is 

 nothing new about the story to most of us ; and it is rather matter for the Field 

 than for this Journal. At the end of his account of it is a short ti'eatise upon 

 elephants, worth reading by any one who has never read a treatise upon elephants 

 before. The most noticeable item in it is his insistance, for cause shown, upon 

 the specific distinction of the Ceylon elephant. 



From Madras he went to Ceylon, arid landed sick with fever at Colombo; where- 

 upon the Odombiads took him to be drunk. As, by his account, part of the 

 accommodation of a Hotel in Colombo was a special room for gentlemen past 

 taking themselves home, perhaps they were not much shocked. 



However he found a doctor who cured him of the fever by a prescription which, 

 for the benefit of all future patients, Mr. Hornaday records. He thinks, however, 

 that it isn't all right ; and we can affirm without fear of the faculty that anv 

 gentleman who brewed it according either to the text or to the explanatory note, 

 would be in possession of a cure for all earthly ills. 

 20 



