MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 1343 



but closer scrutiny revealed the fact that what I had taken to be dust 

 kvas, in reality, a swarm of minute diptera. These tiny flies were thickly pep- 

 pered over the snow for a space of 100 square yards or more, and apparently 

 preferred to stay where they were or else were incapable of removing them- 

 selves by flight. How they got there, or into the predicament in which I 

 found them, is difficult to conjecture, but if I might hazard a guess, I 

 should say they had been wafted in a swarm, in a warm strata of air, from 

 the valley beyond, and, suddenly meeting with the cold air above the 

 glacier, collapsed and fell on the snow in a body. 



Kashmib. July 1912. H. A. F. MAGRATH, Lt.-Col*. 



No. XXXIII.— PRESERVATION OF GAME. 



Some notes by Capt. Mosse on Mr. Hick's " 40 years among the wild 

 animals of India " have induced me to give a few details and make a few 

 suggestions on the subject of game preservation. 



Owing to the courtesy of a former Manager of the Court of Wards, I had, 

 in 1911, the opportunity of shooting in one of the largest of the Zamindarys 

 of the Central Provinces. My primary object was to secure a couple of 

 good heads of that fast disappearing race — the C. P. Buffalo — and anything 

 else, provided it did not interfere with my securing these. 



The Zamindary has an area of something over 2,500 square miles and I 

 had the opportunity of going over some 1,500 of this and in the localities 

 where it would not be unreasonable to expect to see game fairly plentiful. 

 If it had been during the cold weather that I went over this splendid piece 

 of country, there might have been the argument — difficult to overcome — that 

 one could not expect to find game universally plentiful over such a large 

 area of, except for village sites and deserted village sites, uninterrupted 

 jungle. I was however there during the months of April, May and June. 

 At that time of year till the break of the rains, water is very scarce and 

 there are frequently several miles between one patch of water and the 

 other and if there were game about, their tracks would be found at the 

 water. Although continually about before sunrise, I did not come across a 

 single chital and only once a sambar and that was on the borders of 

 Government forest whence it had come a few hundred yards to feed and 

 where it returned at daybreak. There were several things which appeared 

 to me to be conducive to this state of affairs. 



( 1 ) The Native licensed to have a gun. 



In order to show how this man does the greatest amount of harm and 

 the least amount of good : I should note that in this part of the country 

 there is one harvest of rice, which is sewn at the commencement of the rains 

 and reaped in September or October. Protection of crops is the excuse for a 

 gun in many cases and a very legitimate excuse too, provided the use of 



