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ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



courage to summon the dhevadar, who at last sent a 

 peremptory order for all true believers to withdraw. 

 The next morning the repentant saint, with his head 

 thickly bandaged, was seen in the hands of a commit- 

 tee of Brahmins and Hakims, who nursed him with 

 devotion, though they seemed to fear that his immortal 

 part had been hopelessly compromised. 



In the neighborhood of populous cities the pupils of a 

 mahakhund are exposed to grievous temptations ; pious 

 visitors too often surfeit them with sweetmeats. The 

 honuman-house of Kirni-ghar near Allahabad is bur- 

 dened with a number of pensioners who are almost too 

 plethoric to walk and seem to suffer all the horrors of 

 dyspepsia. Such invalids are the objects of a special 

 solicitude, their sufferings being considered as an illus- 

 tration of the proverbial trials of the just; but in times 

 of scarcity their lot becomes truly pitiful. Near Ghuya- 

 por, on the lower Jumna, the scene of Krishna's dalliance 

 with the milkmaids, Dr. V. saw the remains of a baboon- 

 institute that had been abandoned during the late famine, 

 and found the surrounding woods peopled with the ex- 

 pensioners, now reduced to the sad necessity of work- 

 ing for a living, gathering berries and rolling logs and 

 stones in search of coleopterous insects. The young- 

 sters seemed to enjoy their occupation, but the old dys- 

 peptics worked with groans, like the exiled aristocrats 

 after the French Revolution. 



During the Sepoy insurrection, too, the reckless 



