River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1880-02-05
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Wild Animals i'm India.

the harbor of refuge at Milwaukee. Ad-
journed till Monday evening.
Wild Animals in India.
A writer in the Cornhi7liogasiae review
ing the many good works done by the
English for the people of India, notes,
among other things, the almost total
determination of wild animals in that
country.
AS the rural communities relinquish-
ed their hamlets, and drew closer to-
gether toward the centre of district,
he says, the wild beats pressed hun
grily On their rear. In vain the East
India Company offered a reward for
each tigers head sufficient to maintain
peasants family in comfort for three
months-an item of outlay which the
English officers deemed so important
that when, in the financial crisis Of
1790-91, the Treasury had to suspend
all payments, it made the tiger money
and diet allowance for prisoners the
sole exceptions to the rule. In vain
it spent the whole land revenue OF a
frontier district in rewards for killing
wild beasts. A belt of jungle filled with
ferocious animals lay for years around
the cultivated land. The official records
frequently speak of the mailbag being
carried off by tigers, and the custom of
the maiirunners carrying jangling rings
or bells to scare away the wild beasts
survived to our own day. Lord Corn
wallis, in 1889, had to sanction grant
of public money to free the military
road from the depredations of these
animals.
The ravages of the wild elephants
were on 81 larger scale, and their exter-
mination formed one of the most i'm
portant duties of the British officers
after the country passed under English
rule. Tigers, leopards. and wolves
slew their thousands of men and their
hundreds Of thousands of cattle. But
the herd of wild elephants was abso-
lutely resistless, lifting off roofs, pushing
down walls, tramplIng a village under
foot as if it were city of sand which q
child had built upon the shore. In two
parishes alone, during the last few years
of the native administration, fifty-siZ
hamlets with their surrounding lands
chad all been destroyed and gone to
jungle, caused by the depredations of
wild elephants" Another official re-
turn states that forty market villages
throughout Brbhum district had been
deserted from the same cause. Large
reductions had to be made in the land
tax, and the East India Company Dor.
rowed tame elephants from the native
Viceroy's stud in order to catch the
wild ones. 81 had ocular proof on my
journey" writes an English officer in
1871, ''of their ravages. The poor timid
native ties his cot in tree, to which be
retires when the elephants approach,
and silently views the destruction of his
cottage and the whole profits of his
labor" One night" writes an English
surveyor In 1910, although | had q
guard, the men o. the village close to
my tent retired y the trees, and the
women hid themselves among the cat
tie, leaving their huts prey to the ele-
plants, which knew very we'll where to
look for grain. Two nights before, some
Of them had unroofed hut in the vii
lage, and had eaten up all the grain
which poor family possessed" "Most
fortunately for the population of the
country" wrote the greatest elephant
hunter OF the last century, they de-
light in the sequestered range of the
mountains; il they preferred the plains,
whole kingdoms would be laid waste -
All this is now changed. One of the
complaints Of the modern Englishman
in India is that he can so seldom get a
shot at tiger. Wolves are dying out
in many provinces: the ancient Indian
lion has disappeared. The wild elephant
is so rare that he is specially protected by
the government, and in most parts OF
India he can only be caught by official
license or under official supervision.
Many districts have petitioned for close
season, SO as to preserve the edible
game still remaining. The only animal
that has defied the energy OF the Brit
ish official is the snake. One may, how.
ever, Judge of the loss of life by wild
beasts in the last century from the
doeths CAUSED by this, their chiofsurviv-
or, at the present day. The ascertained
number of persons who died from
snake-b bites in 1875 was 900 out of a
total of q 391 killed by snakes and all
other wild animals. The deaths from
wild beasts in the last century were
probably not under 10000 a wear.