478 Mr. W. Jesse on the 
is not immediately apparent, and it is often only by the 
merest accident that it is discovered. The principal offenders 
are the lower caste Hindus, Chamars, Pasis, Ahirs, and 
Bhatus, the Mahomedan shikari, and the poorer classes of 
Europeans, Eurasians, and native Christians. Numbers of 
gun licenses are issued in India, nominally to protect the 
crops ; but no one, except the man who will not see, ever 
supposes that a native fires off shots to scare animals : shouts 
and yells and hand-clapping do quite as much good, and at a 
far cheaper rate. Were the gun -barrels for crop-protection 
reduced to fifteen or eighteen inches, we should have fewer 
weapons slaughtering the living creatures, male, female, 
and young without discrimination, in and out of season. , It 
is a matter for congratulation that the Government are shew- 
ing signs of awakening to the seriousness of the situation, 
and are desirous of taking steps before it is too late. Un- 
fortunately, political and pseudo-sentimental reasons are often 
allowed to stand in the way of reform. The native press has 
only to hint that the Indian is being unfairly treated to call 
forth a storm of indignant protest from well-meaning people 
in England who are totally ignorant of the East and its 
ways, and are unable to form a proper estimate of the 
views of both parties. The European is constantly being 
forbidden to interfere with certain species which the native 
cherishes, and it does not seem too much to ask that he in 
his turn should be made to refrain from destroying birds 
and animals wholesale during the breeding-season. 
It now but remains for me to give a list of those birds 
which Mr. Reid and I have found existing in and around 
the city of Lucknow. That the list is incomplete I do 
not for a moment deny, but in extenuation of deficiencies 
I would remind those who happen to glance at these notes 
that, not being a Government official, I have no camping 
Opportunities, and, beyond an occasional day or two of 
shooting on the jheels or maidans, I am rarely able to stay 
more than a few miles from my bungalow. Under these 
circumstances I cannot claim to have discovered the occur- 
rence of more than some seventeen or eighteen species in 
