2 AN APOLOGY 



indulgent nature, judging at least by the lenient 

 reception that they accord to many of the works 

 that are specially addressed to them. The present 

 set of notes would, however, hardly have been 

 offered to their indulgence had it not been for 

 the prickings of a certain remnant of hereditary 

 Scottish conscience, which insistently suggest that 

 the unfailing interest and pleasure attending their 

 collection through such a long term of years was a 

 gift too great for any one to lay up for his own 

 benefit without some attempt to share it with 

 others, and especially with those whose lot it might 

 be to spend the best part of their lives in India. 



Any one with some experience of India must be 

 only too familiar with complaints of the dulness of 

 existence there, especially from people who are not 

 wholly overwhelmed by obligatory work. It may 

 seem strange that any one should fail to find the 

 means of killing time in a land thronging with such 

 varied interests, but the fact remains that many 

 people do so, and that there is ample occasion for 

 even the humblest attempts to point out sources of 

 pleasure that lie open to all, even in the smallest 

 and most remote country stations. Even in desert 

 regions countless problems and fields for observa- 

 tion constantly offer themselves to those who are 

 on the look-out, and in most localities the wealth of 

 material is so great as to become a positive snare 

 in the tendency that it has to lure the observer 



