CONSERVATORS’ WORK 157 
old, and children of all ages, and sufficient property 
to cause jealousy in his household. 
But I have already described these forests, and 
can now cross both the Girwa and Koriala Rivers to 
the Kheri District, where the house at Bilraien 
stands on the edge of the forest looking over the 
rice-fields to the hills of Nepal. This was a notable 
place for panthers, and sometimes the sportsman 
might save himself the trouble of looking for them : 
they came to him, and could be seen from the 
veranda stealing through the dusk. One killed two 
of our herd of sheep, dragging them out from a grass 
hut, and during the following day was seen re- 
peatedly in the adjoining scrub, and as often 
disappeared when followed up. Evening had come, 
when, weary of the constant alarms, I went out for 
the last time, and found the beast, also possibly 
fatigued, crouching on the cross-roads. The bullet 
struck the earth in front of his chin, and, passing 
between him and the soil, ripped open his stomach 
as if cut with a knife ; but such was his vitality that 
he got clear away, and was found dead two days 
later by indications afforded by the useful crows. 
Here, too, a curious episode occurred. As I was 
roaming through the sal forest admiring the natural 
regeneration which had followed on closure from 
cattle, so that the young growth was now man- 
high, and so dense that the grass had been com- 
pletely killed down—musing, in fact, on matters 
silvicultural, and not thinking of sport—the elephant 
stopped dead, nearly jerking me on to the mahout, 
and there in front of her lay a tiger crouching. 
Abdul at my back seemed to spend hours in extract- 
