INTRODUCTION 



is done amongst them, but their numbers are kept down 

 by the periodical " kraals," organised by native headmen, 

 by means of which they are caught, tamed, and sold into 

 bondage. Wild elephants do a vast amount of damage to 

 the natives' crops amongst the jungle country villages. 



Bears and leopards are fairly numerous, as they are not 

 especially sought after by the natives, the Rs. 5 reward for 

 their skins not being a sufficient inducement to those ener- 

 getic gentlemen to tramp perhaps 50 miles to the nearest 

 Kachcheri to get it. 



The foregoing is the condition of things in 1904, and 

 how long it will so continue before more stringent action 

 will, and must, be taken I cannot say. 



Game, particularly deer, are very conservative, sticking 

 to a locality through thick and thin, and are not driven 

 away by being shot at merely altering their feeding hours 

 to meet the circumstances. Localities which ten years ago 

 teemed with game are now almost void of life, entirely 

 owing to native hunting and shooting, and I am sorrow- 

 fully watching, at the present day, my own favourite shoot- 

 ing grounds, in which I take but meagre toll of the game, 

 being steadily but surely shot out by endless parties of 

 natives. Their favourite method of evading the law, in 

 the open season, is for one or at most two men in each 

 village to take out game licences, and on the strength of 

 these licences every man in the village shoots, for they all 

 possess guns, going out in small parties of three, four, or 

 five at a time, always accompanied by the, or one of the, 

 licence-holders. Yet such is the amazing ignorance of the 

 officials as to this state of things, that I remember, when 

 our agitation for protection was at its height, in his yearly 

 report one official, speaking of game, actually said, to the 

 best of my recollection, that he did not think so much gang 



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