LUCKNOW CIVIL DIVISION. 445 
few rare and beautiful species were obtained (some now im- 
mortalised in the British Museum!), and the troops of 
fowlers who used to cater for the city and cantonments. 
The few whose memories carry them so far back must 
have noticed the mighty change. The market as a mart 
for wildfowl no longer exists. You may go there in the 
season, morning after morning, and find nothing—nobody. 
Sometimes a solitary hawker, as if risen from the dead, 
may appear at your door, and try to beguile you into pur- 
chasing some dead, attenuated teal, or perchance a Brahminy 
more foolish than his kind, or he would never have been 
caught; but of genuine snipe, duck and geese, one sees but 
little, and that little not very good. No! The  fowlers’ 
occupation is gone. So, too, are the days when one took a 
delight in examining his treasures, or perchance assisted in 
his nightly raids. His nets and decoys are laid aside, and 
he wars with the web-footed tribes no more. 
With the average sportsman it is different. Usually one 
of the here-to-day-and-there-to-morrow type, he has no me- 
mories of the past to haunt him (except, perhaps, memories 
of another kind), and is content if he gets a shot now and 
again, and brings home a dozen birds composed of equal 
parts of teal and shovellers. Ye gods! What a falling off 
is there! JI remember the time when bags of from 15 to 30 
couple of the choicest ducks were the common lot of average 
shots, and I have myself killed as many as 32 brace in a 
day without the aid of a duck gun. This was at Ajaen 
in 1867. In the cold weather of 1885-86, in shooting over 
the same jhils, on three different occasions, my largest bag 
was four birds! In other localities the result of that season’s 
experience was somewhat better, but still far from good. 
Snipe-shooting, too, within easy reach of Lucknow, has fallen 
off to the vanishing point, but it is still possible, in these 
days of railways, to get to places where snipe are fairly 
abundant, though, as we all know, it is quite another thing to 
bag them. 
Now how is this falling off to be accounted for? Am TI right 
in attributing it to the drought of 1877 (see remarks in my pre- 
vious paper) or do wildfowl move about in cycles? I think not. 
I believe they came here, as usual, in 1877 and found the jhils 
dry, went away disgusted, and having spent the cold weather, 
comfortably, in some other locality, have ever since gone there in 
their winter migrations. The famine that followed the drought 
gave a great impetus to the cultivation of the singhara nut, and 
on lakes where it is now cultivated to any extent birds, as a rule, 
are not allowed much peace. This may partially account for 
the comparative absence of birds in certain localities, but I 
