SOME INDIAN FRIENDS AND 

 ACQUAINTANCES 



AN APOLOGY 



" Only the weakness of our organs prevents us from seeing that we 

 are in Fairyland." Novalis. 



THE materials included in the following pages are 

 derived from the entries in a series of note-books that 

 were in almost daily use during a period of nearly 

 thirty years' residence in India, and, in greater 

 part, in Calcutta and the immediate neighbourhood. 

 They do not deal with the abstruser parts of natural 

 science, and, for the most part, are merely fairly 

 accurate records of common events, such as may 

 occur in any garden in the lower deltaic region of 

 the Valley of the Ganges. They deal, in fact, with 

 matters that must be familiar to botanists and 

 zoologists, but which may be of some interest to 

 general readers with a taste for "natural history," 

 who, as a class, would seem to be of a comfortably 



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