386 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



-amiable and promising youth. I must observe there was a large fire blazing 

 close to us, composed of ten or a dozen whole trees; I made it myself on pur- 

 pose to keep tigers off, as I had always heard it would. There were eight or 

 ten of the natives about us, and many shots had been fired at the place and much 

 inoise and laughing at the time, but this ferocious animal disregarded all. The 

 human mind cannot form an idea of the scene; it turned my very soul within me. 

 The beast was about four and a half feet high and nine long. His head appear- 

 ed as large as an ox's, his eyes darting fire, and his roar, when he first seized 

 his prey, will never be out of my recollection. We had scarcely pushed our 

 boats from the shore, when a tigress made her appearance, almost raging mad, 

 and remained on the sand as long as the distance would allow me to see her." 



The following is an extract from the Annual Register for 1787, Calcutta, 

 •October 12th : — ^The following melancholy accident shows that a tiger is 

 ..not always deterred from approaching fire. A small vessel from Ganjam 

 to this port, being longer on her passage than was expected, ran out of 

 provisions and water. Being near the Saugur Island, the Europeans, six 

 in niunber, went on shore in search of refreshments, there being some cocoa- 

 nuts on the island, in search of which they strayed a considerable way inland. 

 Night coming on and the vessel being at a distance, it was thought more safe 

 to take up their night's lodging in the ruins of an old pagoda, than to return to 

 the vessel. A large fire was lighted, and an agreement made that two of the 

 number should keep watch by turns, to alarm the rest in case of danger, which 

 they had reason to apprehend from the wild appearance of the place. It 

 happened to fall to the lot of one Dawson, late a silversmith and engraver 

 in this town, to be one of the watch. In the night a tiger darted over the fire 

 upon this unfortunate young man, and in springing off with him, struck its 

 head against the side of the pagoda, which made it and its prey rebound up- 

 on the fire, on which they rolled over one another once or twice before he was 

 carried off. In the morning the thigh bones and legs of the unfortunate victim 

 were found at some distance ; the former stripped of its flesh and the latter 

 :shockingly mangled. 



Charlton Kings, England, 



June 1920. R. G. BURTON, Brig.-Genl. 



No. III.— A SPORTING DIARY. 



The Society is indebted to His Highness the Maharaja of Bikanir for permis- 

 sion to publish the following extracts from His Highness's Sporting Diary. 

 The extracts deal with a sporting trip His Highness made in Nepaul between 

 March and April 1920. On the 17th March the first camp was made at a village 

 called Babia and on the 20th His Highness shot his first Wild Buffalo. Writing 

 from Babia on the 17th he says : — 



" Saw at Hathi Manda village, half an hour's journey from Babia, a 

 tame male buffalo, which, while tied to a tree in the village, was set on and 

 badly gored by a Wild Buffalo (Arna) who lives in the jungle close by and 

 spends most of the night till fairly late in the mornings with the tame she- 

 buffaloes of the village in the open patch close by the village." 

 On the following day an unsuccessful attempt was made to bring the beast 

 to bay, in regard to which His Highness writes : — 



" Unfortunately a mess was made owing to overkeenness. Bearing in 

 mind the late Maharaja of Cooch Behar telling me how Wild Buffalo, living 

 with village buffaloes, were sometimes easily shot off elephant, I thought 

 same would result to-day. But the buff was on the other side of the plain 

 from where we entered it — two howdah elephants only, self and Hiru. As 



