CHAPTER II. 



No Close Season or other Protection of Game in Bengal Unlimited 

 Destruction of Fish Fry Shooting Season in Bengal Snipe 

 Plover Partridge Wild Fowl Cranes Hog Hunting Coursing 

 Deer and Tiger Shooting Quail The best Season for the Pursuit 

 of Big Game Breeding Season Snakes Great Destruction of 

 Human Life by Venomous Reptiles. 



A GLUTTON at sports, with abundance of leisure, and ample 

 pecuniary resources, might, if so inclined, shoot all the year 

 round in Bengal, the months of June, July and August only 

 excepted. There is no close time, and at no period of the 

 year is game protected for the breeding season, as in some 

 more enlightened parts of India ; so that deer, hares, antelope, 

 floriken, pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, pheasants, spur-fowl, and par- 

 tridges, plentiful twenty years ago, are fast disappearing ; for- 

 tunately the migratory birds remain almost as abundant as 

 ever, although even teal, ducks, and geese have altogether 

 abandoned many marshes and large lakes to which they used 

 to resort in tens of thousands between October and April, and 

 the sportsman must now seek them in remote places to enjoy 

 good sport. Even the commoner varieties of cranes, storks, 

 and herons, which might have been seen almost everywhere in 

 numbers in former times, are becoming rare, except in certain 

 undisturbed localities. 



The native " Shikaree " is a true pot-hunter, utterly in- 

 different as to sex or season, as also to the fact that by 

 destroying game during the breeding-time he injures his own 

 interests, and by killing does and sitting birds he kills the 

 goose which lays the golden eggs and supports him and his 



