RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



pardah, game of all descriptions increased to an extra- 

 ordinary extent 



To enter on a discussion of the classes of natives most 

 to blame would be too lengthy a matter here; but it is 

 fairly certain that, after the village shikaris, policemen and 

 forest guards are to a large extent guilty parties. In any 

 scheme to restrict guns, therefore, due consideration should 

 be given to the supervision of these worthies. 



In addition to the distressing state of affairs consequent 

 on these depredations, which are, after all, only natural to 

 the untutored and irresponsible native, there have been 

 noticed a few cases of organised destruction of game, so 

 thinly disguised that one wonders how it has been left to 

 mere sportsmen visitors to discover their existence a 

 reflection which is, to put it very mildly, the reverse of 

 complimentary to the district officials, who ought to have 

 known of and taken measures to repress them. 



Some years ago it was the lot of the writer to discover 

 an agency for the wholesale slaughter of big game in a 

 certain district. 



After tracing it so far as he was able, he brought it to the 

 notice of sportsmen, through the medium of the then 

 leading sporting newspaper on the Calcutta side, as 

 follows : 



EXTERMINATION OF INDIAN GAME. 



Yet another appeal to sportsmen to be merciful, and re- 

 frain from slaughter, in a leading article, entitled " The 

 Extermination of Wild Life," printed in the of Sep- 

 tember 1 8th, and an appeal that is no doubt a necessary 

 one. Only in the last batch of English newspapers I notice 

 in the columns of Black and White the reproduction of a 

 photograph, accompanied by an effusion from " A Sports- 

 man," who brags of having in nine years killed eight thou- 

 sand head of Indian and Burmese game ! 



At the same time there are other forces at work, steadily 



