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flat rock on which I was that I could have touched him with a 

 short spear or even a walking stick, had either been at hand, 

 glaring meanwhile, with the most evil eye I have ever had 

 turned on me, and then slowly and unwillingly sank at my feet. 

 Long as is this tale, for it is, I feel, told most vilely, the entire 

 performance did not take many seconds. All was throughout as 

 visible to the eye as if it had taken place in the swimming bath of the 

 Club at Madras ; for the pool, although very deep, was not much 

 broader and the water quite as clear. The alligator appeared 

 between 5 and 6 feet long. He had cut the head of the bitch 

 deeply in four places with his teeth. These wounds were speedily 

 cured, not so those to her nerves ; for many days elapsed before 

 she would, unless compelled, leave my tent. I put several bullets 

 into the alligators about this river, but did not bag one. There 

 could hardly have been a better opportunity than this of observing 

 the tactics of an alligator, and from it I am led to think that the 

 otter, lithe and active as an eel, would, in the wa'ter, have little to 

 dread from any rival swimmer. 



Page 20, No. 16, Water Fowl on the Ckilka Lake. 



In corroboration of what I have written regarding the countless 

 birds on this magnificent sheet of water : I need only say that, in 

 one day's shooting between Burcool, the first bungalow in the 

 Bengal Presidency and Rumba, which is on the Madras borders, a 

 distance [I speak from memory, so may be wrong] of about 20 

 miles, I bagged, from my boat and with great ease, fifty grey and 

 pintail duck, besides several teal and other water birds and a fine 

 peacock which I saw on the shore and, having landed, got after 

 a short stalk : I might have largely added to this bag of duck, but 

 it would have been wanton cruelty on my part to do so ; for the 

 flesh of the birds was useless to me or my people who had 

 more game than they could eat, and I merely shot up to the number 

 here mentioned, in order to make a bag, a proceeding which I 

 do not attempt to defend ; but it is often hard to restrain the 

 trigger finger. 



Two or three days after this, at Priaghee, on the opposite side of 

 the lake, I killed, in one afternoon, twenty-two curlew, one of the 



