304 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



been informed of our coming, and purposely forestalling us 

 by an hour or two. But for these two guns being on our 

 ground before us, I feel sure that N. and I should that day 

 have secured sixty or seventy couple, as the ground shot over 

 by us was but a continuation of the other, and we should 

 assuredly have covered them both. 



In the wilder parts of the country one may encounter? 

 while in pursuit of snipe, larger game, not to be stopped by 

 a charge of small shot. It is as well, therefore, to be pro- 

 vided in such cases with ball cartridges, if not with a double 

 rifle. At all times it is imperative upon sportsmen to keep 

 a bright look out for snakes, which are addicted to an incon- 

 venient habit of basking in the sun upon the low ridges 

 which divide rice-fields, and serve as miniature embankments 

 to retain water on them. I have known them to seize a 

 wounded bird, and on one occasion I narrowly escaped the 

 bite of a black cobra, which had picked up a snipe shot by 

 me, and was gliding away with it in its mouth, when run- 

 ning up I put my hand upon it, intending to take up what 

 I believed to be a fluttering bird attempting to get away. 

 Harriers and some other kinds of hawks are frequently most 

 annoying in following the gunner and defrauding him of his 

 birds by their rapid swoops ; but, on the other hand, they serve 

 to force birds to lie close, by quartering the fields in search 

 of prey. 



I went out one morning, early in the month of September, 

 to shoot snipe on the island of Shahazpoor with T., the local 

 official magnate, and had put upon the stick three or four 

 birds, then far from plentiful, when I came upon the fresh 

 foot-prints of a tiger on the muddy crest of a dividing ridge 

 of the fields we were walking over, and on quickly looking 

 ahead, detected the animal himself as he slouched into a line 

 of tree and bush covert a few hundred paces in front, into 

 which he disappeared after a glance at us over his shoulder. 

 We had roused our friend in the green rice, in which he had 

 been lying on the look-out for some trespassing bullock or 

 buffalo. I had a rifle with me, but it was not handed me 



