348 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



rifle ; the former rarely saddled or harnessed, and the use of 

 the latter hardly known, although there were to be had in the 

 district both hunting and shooting to a fair extent. 



As a plain matter of fact, Bengal is not a country 

 abounding in a wealthy, sporting, and rollicking community 

 of officials and planters, whose only faults are inordinate 

 generosity and hospitality ; on the contrary, it is in the main 

 a very dull one, sparsely inhabited by a hard-working and 

 plodding race of European men, whose aim is to get through 

 the day's work before sunset, in order to play a few games of 

 tennis or billiards before dinner and bed. There is much 

 good fellowship and much kindly intercourse, but those 

 historical bursts of joviality, and social and sporting high- 

 jinks, are as rare as the famed golcl-pagoda trees, which 

 however still survive and bear fruit under the grateful shade 

 of the courts of law, and in the fertile fields of trade. 



A small medicine-chest, containing scissors, lancet, and 

 needles, in addition to drugs, is a necessary part of every 

 sportsman's outfit, besides a small store of carbolic acid, alum, 

 and arsenical soap for curing skins. The medicines need not 

 be more than quinine, cholera mixture, chlorodyne, laudanum, 

 Cockle's pills, spirits of ammonia, nitre, lunar caustic, tur- 

 pentine, and one or two others. When out hunting, horse 

 medicines should not be forgotten. 



If wounds received from the teeth or claws of tigers or 

 panthers have to be dressed, they should be opened out to 

 their very bottom, so that the carbolic acid or other medicine 

 applied may thoroughly search them and leave no part 

 untouched. Without cutting down freely, the base of the 

 wounds may not be reached. Remember that such wounds 

 are curved, and if the smallest atom of the putrid matter, 

 which usually clings to the teeth and claws of the carnivora, 

 remain in the wound, the most serious results ensue, whereas 

 the lancet or knife will do no harm that cannot be easily met 

 and overcome. Anyone who has had much experience will 

 recall many instances of punctures and lacerations, which 

 appeared of no serious nature at first, ending in death within 



