Nor circumscrib'd in dignitie alone "Do I my rich superior's vassal ride; "Sad penurie, as was in cottage known, "With all its frowns, does o'er my roof preside. "Ah! not for me the harvest yields its store, "The bough-crown'd sheaf i vain attracts mine eye; "To labour doom'd, and destin❜d to be poor, "I pass the field, I hope not envious, by. "When at the altar, surplice-clad I stand, "The bride-groom's joy draws forth the golden fee; "The gift I take, but dare not close my hand; "The splendid present centres not in me." SELECTIONS. On the manner of hunting and sporting by the English at Bengal. Communicated by Col. G. IRONSIDE*. FEW parties of pleasure can be more agreeable than those for hunting, formed by ladies and gentlemen in Bengal, particularly at some distance from the presidency of Fort William, where the country is pleasanter, and game of every kind in greater plenty. Any time between the beginning of Novem ber and end of February is taken for these excursions; during which season the climate is delightfully temperate, the air perfectly serene, and the sky often without a cloud. To transport the tents and other requisites, for the accommodation of the company, to some verdant spot, near to a grove and rivulet, previously selected, elephants and camels are borrowed; small country carts, oxen, and bearers hired, at no considerable expense, the price of all kinds of grain, and wages of course, being exceeding reasonable. Nor does the commanding officer of the troops within the district, often refuse a guard of seapoys to protect the company from the danger of wild beasts, (for such generally resort to the haunts of game,) or the depredations of still wilder banditti, now and then pervading the country. The larger tents are pitched in a square or circle, while those for the guards and servants usually occupy the outer space. Every two or three apartments, for her marquée for a lady is divided into camp-bed, her closet, and her matted, and is covered with a dressing-room; is carpetted or spreading fly, for defence against rain, or exclusion of casual heat, the air ventilating powerfully between the vacuity (about two feet) mitted undulation. The doors or of the tent and its canopy in unrecurtains of the marquée, wattled the weather chance to become with a sweet-scented grass, are, if sultry, continually sprinkled with chintz wall, stained in handsomelywater from the outside; and a the whole. figured compartments, encompasses if no village be very near, petty For the supply of common food, chandlers shops enow are engaged by the family banyans (house stewprofit of such an opportunity of ards) to accompany them, glad to of European articles, are provided gain. Liquors, and every species by the party themselves. Horses are employed for the conveyance of the gentlemen, and pa *From the Asiatic Annual Re- lanquins for the ladies, with their gister, for 1801. female attendants: and, where the roads will admit of it, close and open English carriages also. Part of the morning sports of the men, commencing at the dawn of day, consist in rousing and chasing the wild boar, the wolf, and antelope (or gazelle), the roebuck, the musk, the red and other deer, hares, foxes, and jaccals: besides the common red, the spotted and the small moose, there are ten or twelve sorts of hog or short-bristled deer. Boars are usually found amongst the uncultivated tracts, or the more regular plantations of sugar-canes, which give to their flesh the finest flavour imaginable. Wolves and jaccals are seen prowling and lurking, at break of day, about the skirts of towns and villages, or retiring from thence to their dens within woods; or within pits, hollows, or ravines, on the downs. Hares shelter in the same situations as in England. The hog, roebuck, and musk-deer conceal themselves amongst the thickest heath and herbage, and the antelope and large deer rove on the plains. All these animals, however, resort not rarely to the jungles (or very high coarse and implicated grass), with which the levels of Hindostan abound, either to graze, to browse, or in pursuit of prey. A country of Asia, abounding in such variety of game, is, of course, not destitute of wild beasts; the principal of which are the tiger, leopard, panther, tiger-cats, bear, wolf, jaccal, fox, hyena, and rhinocercs. The leopards are of three or four kinds. Or the gentlemen divert themselves with shooting the same animals; as also common partridge, rock partridge, hurrial or green pigeons, quail, plover, wild cocks and hens, curlews; black, white, and grey peacocks; florikens, storks of several kinds and colours, together with water hens, Braminy geese, cranes, wild geese and ducks, teal, widgeons, snipes, and other aquatic fowl, in infinite abundance; many of them of extraordinary shape, of glowing variegated plum VOL. I....NO. III. age, and of unknown species; whose numbers almost cover the water when they swim, and, when alarmed and flushed from the lakes, like a cloud, absolutely obscure the light. The foxes are small, slenderly limbed, delicately furred with a soft brown hair, and by no means rank in smell; feeding principally upon grain, vegetables, and fruit. They are exceedingly fleet and flexible, though not strong or persevering. When running, they wind in successive evolutions to escape their pursuers, and afford excellent sport. Their holes are usually excavated, not in woods, but on hillocks, upon a smooth greensward or lawn, where, in a morning or evening, they are seen playing and frisking about with their young. They feed generally amongst the corn, and are oftenest found within fields of mustard or linseed, when it has sprouted up high enough to conceal them. A minor critic, on perusal of sop's, or rather Pilpay's Fables, ridiculed the idea of foxes feeding upon grapes; but, had he consulted any Asiatic natural history, he would have learned that they subsist upon grain, pulse, and fruit, particularly grapes and pine-apples, when within their range, much more than upon flesh or fowl. Or, had he turned to the Bible, he would have there found the following passage in confirmation of it.... "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes"..... Canticles, c. ii. ver. 15. Jaccals are rather larger than English foxes; but of a brown colour, clumsier shape, and n pointed about the nose. In nature, they partake more of the wolf than of the dog or fox. Their real Asiatic name is shugaul, perverted by English seamen trading to the Levant (where they are in plenty on the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor) into jaccals. Of the partridge there are several kinds, one with a white belly, and another with something like There are no pheasants in the woods of Bengal or Bahar, nearer than the confines of Assam, Chittagong, and the range of mountains separating Hindostan from Tibet and Napaul. But there, particularly about the Morung and in Betiah, they are large and beautiful, more especially the golden, the burnished, the spotted, and the azure, as well as the brown Argus pheasant. As for peacocks, they are everywhere in multitudes, and of two or three species. One tract in Orissa is denominated More-bunje, or the Peacock district. Cranes are of three sorts, and all of a cerulean grey: the very lofty one, with a crimson head, called sarus; the smallest called curcurrah, the (demoiselle of Linnæus and Buffon), uncommonly beautiful and elegant, whose snowwhite tuft, behind its scarlet-glowing eyes, is the appropriate ornament for the turban of the emperor alone, and the middle-sized one with a black head, the common grus. They return to the northern mountains about the autumnal equinox, after the cessation of the periodical rains, with their young, in myriads of flights, frequent as the woodpigeon in North-America: and sometimes, when the wind is very violent, flocks of them mount to a vast height in the air, and there wind about in regular circles, seemingly with much delight, and venting all the time a harsh discordant scream, heard at a considerable distance. In the wilds of Hindostan certainly originated the common domestic fowl, for they are there discovered in almost every forest. They are all bantams, but without feathers on their legs; the cocks are in colour all alike, what sportsmen call ginger red; they have a fine tufted cluster of white downy feathers upon their rumps, are wonderfully stately in their gait, and fight like furies. The hens are invariably brown. It is through the woods early in a extremely pleasant, in travelling morning, to hear them crowing, and to perceive the hens and chickens skulking and scudding between the bushes. For food, they are neither so palatable nor tender as the tame fowl. scripta, I believe, in ornithology. Florekins are amongst the non deA drawing can alone exhibit an adequate representation of this pastures amongst the long grass, fine bird; it harbours in natural borders of swampy grounds, lying on the extremity of lakes, and the between marshy soils and the partake, in colour and relish, of uplands. Hence its flesh seems to the nature and flavour of both the wild duck and the pheasant; the colour of the flesh on the breast and wings being brown, but on the legs perfectly white, and the whole of voury flavour conceivable. the most delicate, juicy, and sa feet: the roots of the feathers of There are only three claws to its the female are of a fine pink colour. fine black velvet feathers, which When the cock rises up, some commonly lie smooth upon his head, then stand up erect, and form a tuft upon his crown and his neck. and scarcely ever rises till the of ancient knightly festivals of the of Bengal, from the ground when The height from the ground to the top of his head, when he holds it upright, is twenty-seven inches. The length from the tip of his back to the end of his tail, is twentyseven inches. In no part of southern Asia did I ever hear of woodcocks; but amongst the breed of snipes there is one called the painted snipe, larger than ordinary, and which well compensates for want of the former. Fishing, both with lines and diversity of nets, is the employment of other sets of the party; or the hawking of herons, cranes, storks, and hares, with the falcon; and of partridge and lesser birds, with the sparrow and small hawks. Ladies now and then attend the early field: if it be to view the coursing or hawking, they mount upon small, gentlest (for they are all gentle) female elephants, surmounted with arched-canopied and curtained seats; otherwise they ride on horseback; more frequently however in palanquins, under which, as well as under the elephants and horses, the birds, (particularly the white stork or paddy bird), when pounced at by the hawks, and the little foxes, when hard pressed by the dogs, often fly for shelter and protection. In general, however, the ladies do not rise betimes, nor stir out till the hour of airing. The weapons in use on these expeditions are, fowling pieces, horse pistols, light lances or pikes, and heavy spears or javelins; and every person has, besides, a servant armed with a scimitar or sabre, and a rifle with a bayonet, carrying a two ounce ball, in the event of meeting with tigers, hyenas, bears, or wild buffaloes. Some of the ladies (like Thalestris or Hypolita, quite in the Diana style), carry light bows and quivers to amuse themselves with the lesser game. The dogs are, pointers, spaniels, Persian and European greyhounds, and strong ferocious lurchers. Near Calcutta a few gentlemen keep English hounds; but their scent quickly fades, and they soon dege nerate. But the liveliest sport is exhibited when all the horsemen, elephants, servants, guard, and hired villagers, are assembled and arranged in one even row, with small white flags (as being seen the furthest) hoisted pretty high at certain distances, in order to prevent one part of the rank from advancing before the rest. Proceeding in this manner, in a regular and progressive course, this line sweeps the surface like a net, and impels before it all the game within its compass and extent. When the jungle and coppice chance to open upon a plain, it is a most exhilirating sight to behold the quantity and variety of animals issuing from their coverts: some are driven out reluctantly, others force their way back into the brake. During this scene of developement, rout, and dispersion, prodigious havoc is made by the fowlers, falconers, and huntsmen, whilst the country people and children, with sticks and staves, either catch or demolish the fawns, leverets, wild pigs, and other young animals, which have returned into the coppice. Instances occasionally occur, when the natives of the vicinage petition the gentlemen to destroy a tiger that has infested the district, to the annoyance and devastation of their flocks and shepherds, and perpetual alarm of the poor cottagers themselves. Although an arduous and perilous adventure, and what the gentlemen all profess, in their cooler moments, to reprobate and decline, yet, when in the field, they generally comply with the solicitation, and undertake the exploit. Their instant animation, not unattended with emotions of benevolence and compassion, presently supersedes every dictate of prudence, and, spite of their predetermination, they proceed to the assault, the villagers all the while standing aloof. If conducted deliberately, with circumspection, and |