“Gunning and especially netting, in the most reckless and improvident manner, are on the increase.  Antelope are fast disappearing, and in the jungle tracts night shooting is clearing out spotted deer especially.  As for cruelty nothing can exceed the indifference of net-workers to any pain they may cause their captures.  Snipe are caught and their legs and wings broken, and in this condition they are kept alive and carried to market.  The wounding, necessarily reckless during night shooting, is horribly cruel.  Pea fowl, jungle fowl, or anything fairly big, have their eyes sewn up.  I have often seen this.  In the case of hares the tying is very cruel, the thong cutting down to the bone; and the same is the case with any deer they may catch alive.”

The rapid destruction of game of all kinds has been as melancholy as it has been remarkable, and I confess I never could have believed how complete, especially as regards small game, the deadly work has been had I not had occasion in recent years to drive, by easy stages, and early in the morning, along the whole of the western frontier of Mysore, and also much of the adjacent district of Coorg.  In the old days, when riding, we always went at a walk and took our guns with us for shots at pea fowl, jungle fowl, pigeons, and other small game.  But now you can neither see nor hear anything to shoot.  And yet one of the favourite accusations of the Indian Congress against the Indian Government is that in consequence of the Arms Act the natives are unable to obtain guns and ammunition in order to defend themselves and their crops from the attacks of wild animals, though the scarcity of large game, and, in many cases, its absolute extinction, is notorious to sportsmen all over India.  But the Mysore Government, I am happy to say, has at last directed its attention to the subject, and I have every reason to believe that a Game Act will soon be introduced in Mysore.

The last want I have to allude to is that of a Government agricultural chemist, who should be empowered at a rate of fees, fixed by the State, to analyze soils and manures for private individuals, and to consult with planters and others as to the requirements of their soils and the best way of supplying them with manure.  Such an officer would be very useful in searching for coprolites and new manurial resources.  My life-long experience in agriculture on a large scale both in Scotland and Mysore has shown me more and more the great value of an agricultural chemist for discovering new manurial resources, and perhaps more especially economizing those that already exist; and the great want of such an officer was brought to the notice of Government by me when I was a member of the Representative Assembly in 1891.