398 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892 



writer to raise his rifle see that the buck was in velvet, and then 

 lower it. On the remonstrance of the young heir, acting as host, 

 that his grandfather would be angry with him if one beast escaped 

 the guest's rifle, it was raised again, and the buck died without know- 

 ing what killed him, having stood, while his life was in argument, 

 much quieter than if he had been a man in the dock. 



It was sickening, but the next shot was better. A huge boar, 

 with a dozen dogs behind him, came tearing through the tamarisks. 

 He knew the dangers of the gap well ; and hurled himself at the fence 

 to the right of the guns, trusting to his weight to carry him through 

 it — which it did — dead. In such a place there is hardly any limit 

 to the slaughter possible. One of the writer's assistants^ then young, 

 killed eight bucks in one morning without counting does, fawns, or 

 pigs. Sometimes trapped hog-deer are put into the enclosure over 

 night. The only real shooting given is by the pigs, which 

 seldom start until the dogs are on their sty, and then go past at full 

 speed, caring naught about the string in the gap, or, Kke our wise 

 old boar, passing to the right of the " Kunda " and forcing their 

 way through the half-rotten fence, instead of giving the shot to the 

 left through the gap. 



The whole procedure is intensely uncomfortable. You must rise 

 at ungodly hours ; ride through cold jungles dripping with dew, do 

 exactly what you are bid ; and curl your legs into Asiatic positions 

 for hours ; in a hut of damp rotten brushwood and thatch. If you 

 smoke, drink, swear, stretch your legs, or do anything Christian, 

 every failure in the whole business must be laid upon your back. It 

 is therefore best, in these circumstances, to do all these things ; and 

 to be a Political Agent. 



Even so, you don't get off easily. This writer had to shoot from 

 *'Kundas" two days running to please an imperative invalid 

 Amir who thought his bag not such as " bef at " eleven guns ; after 

 shamefully evading a first day and sending out the young fellows to 

 whom the thing was new. 



On the third morning the " Gros Yeneur " and the prince of the 

 blood acting as Mihmandar intimated that if the butcher^s bill was 

 not satisfactory, there were stripes before them, and aU mercy to 

 the brute creation had to be cast to the winds. 



