Excerpt from The Forests of Upper India: And Their Inhabitants

In commencing to write the following recollections of years spent mostly in the Forests of Upper India, principally in the Himalayas and north-west and Central Provinces, my Object will be to record such incidents as may elucidate the conditions of life in the forests, and to treat of the wild animals and men met with and their habits, and also casually Of the trees and plants that grow naturally there. I do not pretend to any scientific knowledge of these things, but, being a lover of Nature in all its aspects, I would try and record the results of constant observation made from time to time in the various regions visited, which were to myself highly interesting and instructive, and which I would endeavour to put into intelligible form.

Man was originally a hunting animal, and the instinct certainly is not eradicated among Englishmen yet, though there are some who have not a soul for sport. But to many men, and women too, of our country, the wild life in the forest comes quite natural and has a perfect fascina tion. To kill something is said by foreigners to be the daily desire of every Saxon. This is Often too true and that the big game of the world is rapidly and surely becoming extinct is probably due to the persistent energy of the anglo-saxon character in acting up to its proclivities. I would not write to assist such exterminators and pot hunters, whose selfishness and cruelty cannot be sufficiently reprobated. It is, alas too true that as no one will burn an ounce less coal in England because the next generation will surely run short, so the wild animals which a few years back abounded in the vast forests of Africa and Western America are now within measurable distance of becoming extinct, the present generation caring nothing for the next.

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