INTRODUCTION 



daries have a fine time of it, and that is all that can 

 be said. 



Pigs, of course, are not protected, nor are they ever 

 likely to need it, as very many of the low country 

 inhabitants will not eat the meat, the Mohammedans, of 

 course, avoiding defilement, and many of their Tamil 

 neighbours abstaining from it out of deference to these 

 same Mohammedans owing to their constant intercourse 

 with them. 



Buffaloes are slaughtered on the quiet in considerable 

 numbers, no water-hole watching native ever refusing such 

 a grand " take " of meat as is offered by that animal. 

 It has to be done quietly, because the licence for shoot- 

 ing a buffalo costs Rs. 25, so a buffalo when shot is usually 

 skinned, cut up and dried, native fashion, over a slow fire, 

 on the spot, and all tell-tale evidence got rid of. Once 

 dried, the meat will pass as deer or any other kind of meat. 



Buffalo have, however, been a good deal decimated by 

 murrain during the last century, though they were exceed- 

 ingly plentiful in Sir Samuel Baker's time, and now are 

 nowhere to be found in any numbers. 



Referring again to deer, the stately elk (always spoken 

 of by that misnomer in Ceylon) is being exterminated in 

 the low country with appalling rapidity, and will soon be 

 as extinct as the dodo, as its bulk, like buffalo, presents an 

 irresistible attraction to the native meat hunter. Soon this 

 grand animal will be confined to the hill-forests or the un- 

 get-at-able large forest blocks of the low country. 



Elephants are about normal, neither too many nor too 

 few at present, but are not nowadays found in the large 

 herds which existed in former days in fact it is an unusual 

 thing to meet a herd exceeding half-a-dozen members in 

 these times. They are protected, and very little shooting 



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