As for deer and antelope, &c., I suppose I did no more than follow the Anglo-Indian fashion made and provided in regard to the keeping of these animals. The average Anglo-Indian domicile is, as often as not, a partially equipped Noah's ark. In the compound are to be found, as a matter of course, goats and sheep, and the sahib's dogs, and the mangy foundlings of the bazaar, and cows from whose milk the memsahib fondly hopes to draw supplies of cream and butter, and horses and poultry of sorts, and teal and quail and pigeons. And to the ordinary collection there are frequently added pea-fowl and monkeys, and deer and cranes of sorts, and other of the commoner creatures of the wilds, and, more rarely, a wolf (chained up to an empty cask) or panther, or any other beast of the forest or fowl of the air that the collector can get hold of. One enthusiast I remember rejoiced in the possession of an Ornithorhynchus paradoxus (or duck-billed platypus), which was very precious to him as such, although it was really quite a different creature. And to all the live-stock, domestic or otherwise, collected in the Anglo-Indian compound, have to be added the inevitable crows and kites. and mynas, and other birds of Indian station life.

Very full of life-animal, reptile, and insectivorous-is the average Anglo-Indian household. In the north it is not an everyday incident to find a cobra or centipede or scorpion domiciled in one's bed or boots, but otherwise the northern provinces are bountifully provided with creatures of sorts—

many of which could be very well dispensed with. The cat only, among domestic animals, is conspicuously absent. That does not thrive in India, and is rarely to be seen in the Anglo-Indian establishment; but rats and mice abound, and knowing no fear of their feline enemy, make themselves thoroughly at home, mix freely with the family, and share the family meals, either discreetly by picking up crumbs below the table or audaciously by plundering the stores upon the sideboard. The purblind musk-rat (that shrew which is so admirable as a parent, and would be so harmless but for its harpy-like faculty of poisoning every edible or potable thing it touches) goes chortling round the room. The nimble squirrel darts in and out. In the verandah caged birds-canaries, doves, and the rest-discourse with the vagabond myna, that, being at liberty, makes itself free in every sense; and overhead the circling kite, watchful of scraps thrown from the kitchen, sings a treble to the hoarse bass of the carrion - crow. Then, when the too vigorous summer threatens, and when anxious mothers and wives, not quite unwilling to be grass-widows, commence their packing for Simla or Naini, there is to be heard too much and too often that bird - note which dominates all other pipings of the feathered choir, and says with damnable iteration, "We feel it" or "Brain-fever," as those who hear may render. Poor Trotty Veck interpreted in various ways the chimes that were so large a feature of his life and story; but as to the awful song of that Indian bird there are only

two known renderings-" We feel it" and "Brainfever."

Among the occasional visitors of the AngloIndian home is the mongoose, a worthy animal enough when regarded as a pet, a predatory scoundrel when it finds its way into the hen-roost, and, I am afraid, a fraud in respect of that snakekilling prowess which is commonly attributed to it. It is said of the mongoose that it will relentlessly pursue the snake wherever it comes across one, that it will engage with the most venomous of the snake tribe, and that, being bitten, say, by a cobra, it rushes off to apply the vegetable antidote only known to the mongoose family, and suffers no ill consequences from that poisonous bite, which causes almost instantaneous death to other animals. One of the tricks of the snake-charmer's trade is the display of a mongoose (probably toothless) and a cobra (certain fang-drawn), which, if they can be cajoled into it, affect to go through a gladiatorial performance; but the whole affair is a sham quite in keeping with the snake-man's pretence of charming out of the sahib's verandah or babbichi-khana or garden-path a snake that he lets loose, at the proper moment, out of the hollow bamboo he carries concealed beneath his dhooti.

It happened to me once to see what might have been a splendid snake-mongoose fight if the mongoose were half as prone to do battle as is believed. Walking quietly along a path, within a dozen yards of me I saw a cobra and two mongooses actively engaged in looking at each other, and too much

occupied that way to notice me when I passed and watched them. The cobra, erect and with outspread hood, turned now to this mongoose and now to that the mongooses seemed to divide their attention between the cobra and consultative matter between their two selves. So did the three conduct themselves for some moments while I watched them; and then the mongooses sidled off on other business than snaking, the cobra dropped his hooded front to the ground, and glided off elsewhere, and that ended the battle.

I suppose the Anglo-Indian who becomes an amateur Jamrach does so very much for the sake of occupation, or to extend the narrowly restricted horizon of his home - life from May to October. Monotony hangs pall-like over his environment during that term, and the dead level of the plains that surround him is exactly typical of the flatness of his daily life outside the work of his kutcherry. Nor can it be truthfully said that the average official life, the preparation of the sacred nuqsha, the report on the Gangetic dolphin, or the annual statistics of the how-not-to-do-it department, is always deliriously varied. Children who call him father may not continuously gladden the heart and make endless variety in the life of this unfortunate the climate forbidding that they should share his exile. So do Anglo-Indians take an interest in animals that are not exactly what they see everywhere, and every day, and every hour of the day I have known them wildly excited by

the first appearance of the bull-frogs that come in with the burst of the monsoon, and absolutely intoxicated by the début of the water-wagtail-the herald of the cold weather. And for much the same reason one does curious things in the way of time - killing: thus, for two years I acted as secretary of the Lucknow Race Club, and for a much longer time as manager of an amateur theatrical company, and I cannot understand that any sane man, being free to live his own life, would have accepted either of those honorary situations while any other employment-stonebreaking or otherwise-was open to him. My experiences as secretary of the Lucknow Race Club were in some sort of a sporting nature, as were my experi

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