288 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



placed inside the hat as an inner lining, will help much to 

 keep the head cool. As a proof of the good service rendered 

 by the bit of that deliciously cool leaf inside the hat, it may 

 be noted that in a couple of hours it will become brown and 

 brittle like dry tobacco. If plantains cannot be readily 

 obtained, any other thick green leaves may be substituted 

 as a light wreath round the hat outside, and some protection 

 from the sun will be obtained ; but the young plantain-leaf 

 is by far the best for that purpose. 



The " sola " hat and helmet are comparatively modern 

 inventions, although one would naturally suppose that seeing, 

 as they must have done, many articles made of this pith by 

 the natives, the old Indians of Olive's and Hastings' times 

 would have been struck at once by its suitability for head 

 covering ; but this does not appear to have been the case, for 

 even down to the days of " George Trigger " (W. H. Hutchin- 

 son, of the Bengal Civil Service), or between 1820 and 1840, 

 his drawings in the old " Sporting Magazine " depict hog- 

 hunters mounted upon closely-docked Arabs, all wearing a 

 hunting-cap of leather, and his shooting-men with straw or 

 beaver hats with or without " pugrees." We are presented 

 also with the picture of a gentleman rejoicing in an extremely 

 youthful face, dressed suitably in the blue frock-coat, crimson 

 silk sash and forage-cap of the period, in pursuit of a wounded 

 tiger some twenty feet in length ! In some well-known 

 coloured prints of hog-hunting, the sportsmen's countenances 

 beam from under the rims of stove hats, to which the gallant 

 artist was himself addicted, but to which the other sportsmen 

 were not, as I can certify. 



When the late James Hume, for many years the senior 

 Magistrate of Calcutta, edited the successor to the " Sporting 

 Magazine,' 7 about 1845 or 1846, we find beneath its yellow 

 cover, illustrated by the late John French, sketches and 

 drawings of men hunting and shooting, protected by " sola " 

 hats and helmets of many patterns ; it may, therefore, be 

 assumed that these had not come into general use till after 

 1830, or even a few years later. Captain Williamson, writing 



