; REVIEWS. 



■"' FORTY YEARS AMONG THE WILD ANIMALS OF INDIA." 



(Some is'otes on a new book.) 



Above is the title of a book recently published, the author of which is 

 : Mr. F. G. Hicks, late Deputy Conservator of Forests. It deals especially 

 with tiger shooting, but apart from this the author has expressed opinions 

 , on two subjects to which I wish to invite attention. 



I. — Game Preservation. 



In his delightful book " Leaves from an Indian Jimgle," Major Glaafurd 

 «ome years ago gave a startling account of the extent to which game 

 is destroyed in the Central Provinces by native shikaris who sell the 

 skins and heads to traders, and shewed that there exists a very consider- 

 able trade in shikar trophies which there is at present apparently no means 

 of checking. 



Mr. Hicks now furnishes us with some equally remarkable inform- 

 ation as to the sale of the flesh of game in some districts. For instance, he 

 writes of the Dehra Dun district " With Dehra and Mussoorie within 

 easy reach there is always a good market for the sale of venison and other 

 game. Consequently the reader may go at almost any time of the year to 

 the Dehra bazar and at a certain butcher's shop he will be able to buy 

 venison at two annas a seer ; this, with mutton selling at five annas a seer 

 in itself speaks for the amount of deer that must be slaughtered for this 

 market." Again, after mentioning the sale of pheasants' eggs at Mussoorie 

 ;at a much cheaper rate than fowls' eggs, he continues " I also know of 

 several hotels which maintain a number of professional shikaris, whose 

 business it is to obtain game for their hotels." 



Again, " It may be argued that the cases I have mentioned are excep- 

 tional owing to the proximity of two large towns, such as Dehra and 

 Mussoorie. But this is so only in the matter of degree * * * * * 

 I was camped lately near a group of villages in the heart of a large 

 jungle. I sent my servant to a butcher whom I had heard of at one of the 

 villages. His reply was that he only killed domestic animals once a week, 

 as it did not pay him to kill more on account of the amount of deer that 

 the local villagers shot or trapped. I found the same demand to exist all 

 over the Central Provinces and Mysore, no matter how uncivilised or out of 

 the way the places might be." 



Of course there is little that is really new in this, while, as Major Glas- 

 furd has pointed out, the root of the trouble lies in the number of guns in 

 the possession of native stiikaris, and the extreme difficulty of satisfactorily 

 enforcing game regulations by means of more or less venial native subor- 

 dinate officials so long as these guns exist. 



