In our country we have several states that are very large, very diversified in surface, and still inhabited by large game.  Has any one of those states created a series of game preserves even half way comparable with those of Kashmir?  I think not.  Montana has made a beginning with two preserves,—­Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains,—­but beside the splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention.

And then following closely in the wake of that document came a lengthy article in the “Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,” by E.C.  Stebbing, in which a correspondent of the Indian Field clearly sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced by a peril new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character.  Hear him: 

“In this inventory (of game destroyers in India), the Gurkha soldier does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by himself with his small but very important personality.  He deserves separate notice.  From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal, to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan range.  In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of Upper India.”

Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in themselves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government?  Why should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive order to the C.O. of each post would effectually stop it?

In the making of game preserves, or “sanctuaries” as they are called out there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence.  The total number is too great for enumeration here.  The native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating about 100,000 acres in area.  In the Wynaad Forest, my old hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting, because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and disease.  The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely ajar.

In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been created.  On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game, and the danger of the extermination of species.  In the past India has been the finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna of big game would be a zoological calamity.