January i8, 19 12] 



NATURE 



179 



UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.' 



'^T^ O say that this is a delightful book is not nearly 

 -*- enough, for quite apart from its marked Hterary 

 ■excellence it embodies — we were almost writing en- 

 shrines — the select experience and seasoned reflection 

 of a man of taste and understanding, who has lived 

 and moved for sixteen years among the things that 

 he writes about. It is one of the best books on Indian 

 sport that it has been our good fortune to read, and 

 from the lyrical dedication "To my '450" to the final 

 •chapter on weapons and explosives, there is scarcely 

 a paragraph that has not salt and savour. 



The author's method is as good as his matter and 

 manner. He gives us, first of all, a pleasing map of 

 his district, with all the physical and administrative 

 features plainly marked. Then in forty-four telling pages 

 lie completes the introduction to his country, giving in a 

 few terse and relevant sentences a good general idea of 



Having given us our bearings in time and space, the 

 author holds up the mirror, and we follow him and 

 his trusty trackers — Paniyas, Karumbas, and other 

 relic jungle-men — after elephants, tigers, leopards, 

 "bison," bear, "ibex," sambur, and other smaller 

 game. Many new and interesting things he tells us 

 about all these animals, and what is not new he 

 recounts with proper emphasis, and with critical ap- 

 praisement of the observations and opinions of others. 

 For the elephant, tame or wild, he has an intense 

 admiration : he has watched the whole tragedy of an 

 elephant fight under nature's own conditions, and 

 although he knows the sensation of being charged by 

 an enraged tusker, and of bearing off the spoils of 

 victory, he says : " I never see an elephant without 

 a feeling of regret that the death of even the one I 

 shot can be laid at my door, and nothing would 

 now induce me to shoot another unless he were a 

 confirmed ' rogue,' or in" self-defence." He maintains, 



Fu;. I. — Needlerock. From "Sport on the Nilgiris 



ats hills, streams, and forests ; of its climate and rain- 

 fall ; of its political oscillations until it became settled 

 by Europeans and fixed in the fabric of the Madras 

 Presidency ; and of its economic ups and downs In 

 the way of coffee-planting and gold-mining. How the 

 latter " industry " has changed the face of certain 

 parts of the district (in south-east Wynaad) is so 

 well pictured that we must quote, or cull, the author's 

 words. After acquiring dozens of planting properties, 

 *' the various gold companies . . . took no heed of 

 their fine coffee. . . . Weeds soon overtopped the 

 •coffee. . . . Fire got in when the hills were burnt 

 according to the annual custom." And now "for mile 

 after mile nothing but an interminable sea of dhub- 

 bay grass marks the site of what were smiling estates. 

 . . A wilderness made bv the abortive search after 

 gold." 



1 "Sport on the Nilgiris and in Wvnaad." By F. W. F. Fletcher. 

 Pi), xix + 456. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 13s. net. 



against Sanderson and Blanford, that the elephant is 

 intelligent above all the beasts of the forest; and he 

 considers— with much justice^ we think— that the ease 

 with which this animal when captured can be tamed 

 and taught is a proof, not of dulness, but of that 

 highest form of intelligence which quickly adapts 

 itself to a new environment. 



The author has often been at close quarters — both 

 accidentallv and by design—with tigers, and he knows 

 these beasts well,' in all their ways and moods; and 

 the outcome of all his experience is that, unless it is 

 wounded, the tiger in Wynaad (where the man-eater 

 is unknown) is a "cowardly beast" in the presence 

 of man. He describes, among other things, the way 

 the jungle-men have of netting and spearing tigers. 

 He once saw a tiger that had been killed, at very 

 close quarters, bv a single charge of buckshot; and the 

 sight so impressed him (six pellets were found to have 

 entered the brain), that he is inclined to recommend 



NO. 2203, VOL. 88] 



