FOOTNOTES: 

[11] The landed qualification varies from 100 rupees to 300 rupees, and the house and shop qualification from 13 rupees to 18 rupees.  This arrangement has evidently been made to suit the wealth or poverty of particular parts of the country.  This seems to be rather an inconvenient system, and it is difficult to see why the lower rates of qualification should not be made universal.

[12] For all practical spending purposes in India the rupee may be reckoned at par.  It is only when it requires to be turned into gold for the purchase of articles in England that its gold value must be taken into account.

[13] The meeting now held was, I am aware, quite out of order, but as the Assembly had taken a new departure some laxness was permissible at first.

[14] On looking at the Government Report of the proceedings of the Assembly for 1891 (which I may observe was not published till the year following), I find that, though 340 members were elected, only 262 attended.  No less than seventy-eight members failed to put in an appearance, and the only probable explanation of this that I can give is that these members felt that they had nothing in particular to represent to the Government, and therefore thought that they might much better remain at home.

CHAPTER IV.

NATURAL HISTORY AND SPORT.

After the numerous books that have been written on Sport in India, a chapter on this subject might at first sight seem superfluous.  So might, at first sight, another novel full of what has been written thousands of times before about love.  And yet we never tire of hearing or reading of either, and naturally, for both appeal to the imagination, and carry the mind far away from business or carking cares, or, in other words, that proverbial smoky chimney with which every house is provided.  And if the mere reading of love or sport makes men and women feel better because it takes them away from themselves (we should have no mirrors in our rooms), what must the reality of either be?  For both dart through the system with electric and delight-yielding force, and produce effects which, to those who have not experienced them, are wellnigh incredible.  And, as regards big game shooting in particular, the effects are so astonishing that one almost ceases to believe in them till another experience proves over again that sport, or even the prospect of sport, can effect miracles, or at least that it can cause an alteration in the system through the action of the mind.  And, some eighteen months ago, I realized this most vividly when feeling much out of sorts, and indeed unfit for anything.  For just at the time of my deepest depression, news came in that a tiger had killed two cattle in my plantation, and, what made the news much more acceptable, two trespassing cattle—­animals which are the plague of a planter’s life.  The news acted