NOtiCfiS OF NEW BOOKS* 315 



hitherto availed to help him. In the West public instruction 

 becomes more real and vital every year, but in the East it is still 

 " bound hand and foot to the corpse of a dead literature." 



The author concludes that, admitting the need for a legislative 

 measure for the protection of animals consonant with the wishes 

 and feelings of the most cultivated classes in India, and of itself 

 a sign of advancing civilization and morality, it would be a task 

 as difficult as hateful to prove that the people at large have any 

 abnormal and inborn tendency to cruelty. 



To give an idea of the scope and variety of the subjects dealt 

 with in Mr. Kipling's book, we may remark that he has several 

 chapters on domestic animals, including Elephants and Camels, 

 besides chapters on birds, monkeys, and reptiles, animal-calls, 

 animal training, and animals in Indian art. India has a great 

 name for the training of animals, and the pages devoted to this 

 subject in the present volume contain much that is interesting. 



The late Bev. J. G. Wood wrote unadvisedly that " in India, 

 trained Otters are almost as common as trained Dogs," but this 

 is one of the n,any inaccuracies to be found in the works of this 

 popular compiler. Mr. Kipling tells us that trained Otters are 

 not used throughout Hindustan, nor in Central India, nor in the 

 Punjab (where they exist in numbers) and even in the regions 

 where they assist in fishing they are never seen out of the hands 

 of their owners, obscure river-side tribes. They are only em- 

 ployed in the back-waters of Cochin, in part of Bengal, and on 

 the Indus river. The Cormorant and the Pelican are also used 

 lor fishing by the Indus boatmen, as in China, but, as might be 

 expected from its slow and clumsy gait, the Pelican, though fur- 

 nished by nature with a line " game-bag " or " creel," is inferior 

 as a fisher to the Cormorant. 



It must be a pretty sight to observe the hooded Cormorants 

 on the fisherman's house-boats, and the Otters tethered to stakes 

 close by, the latter playing with the no less amphibious children, 

 and behaving like the playful intelligent water-cats they are. 

 But, as Mr. Kipling points out, this sight, and the knowledge 

 that they are used in this wise, are distinctly uncommon, and 

 out of the range of the people of India at large. 



Several pages are devoted to an account of the Cheeta, or 

 Hunting Leopard, and the method of training him. Most people, 

 we imagine, are under the impression that the animal to be tamed 



