lion is sometimes spoken of slightingly, as if it was a
feeble creature and almost extinct. A visit to Kathiawar, in Guzerat,
would dispel the idea. In one forest alone, only a few years back,
there were said to be a hundred lions, which were the terror of the
surrounding villages. One of these lions in recent years killed an
officer who formed one of a shooting party organised for the benefit
of one of the former governors of Bombay.

CHAPTER XXVI

SOME INDIAN ANIMALS

The squirrel. The tame antelope. Effect of the railway.
Monkeys in Delhi. In the jungle. Wild pigs; their
destruction. The mongoose. The buffalo; its milk; its
disposition. The Indian donkey. Hard labour. Poor fare.
Indian callousness. Elephants. Camels. The horse.

In the jungle of trees and coarse vegetation which surrounds many of
the old-fashioned bungalows in India, the shrill, nor very musical
call of the squirrel--half cry and half whistle--may frequently be
heard. They gambol about the trees, and run up the walls of the
bungalow, and chase each other along the eaves with apparent gaiety
and freedom from care. But as you watch them through the chinks of the
blinds made of slender reeds, which shade the verandah from the glare
of the sun, you see signs that all is not harmony even in their small
world.

The grey and black striped fur of the squirrel always appears
spotlessly clean, and in all their spare moments they are busy at
their toilet. The bushy tail is their chief beauty, and it is scarcely
ever at rest. Like so many other animals, they betray their varying
emotions by the way in which they frisk it about. Their manners are
beautiful, and when they have got hold of a choice morsel they take it
in their paws, and sitting on their haunches eat it with evident
enjoyment, but with a certain polish and grace of manner pretty to
see. Young squirrels are easily tamed, and soon get reconciled to
making their home in the jacket pocket of a schoolboy.

When I was staying in the bungalow of a country mission, an
exquisitely graceful antelope stepped into the verandah, and entering
the room where we were breakfasting, went up to my host and asked for
food. He had tamed it when young, but it was now living a semi-wild
life, and was often absent in the jungle for days together. In some
parts of India various kinds of deer may be seen from the windows of
the train. The making of a line of railway naturally has the