Page:Advice to the Indian Aristocracy.djvu/23

 do not like to see persons of rank too submissive." The whole chapter is alike in matter and in manner admirable. As to sport, I would only put in a plea for that much maligned friend of the agriculturist the tiger, who keeps down the head of crop- destroying deer, antelope and pig, and takes a comparatively moderate toll of cattle. The man-eater is a disgrace to his class and of rare occurrence. For the destruction of such it is fair to offer rewards, but surely the slayer of 100 tigers is the ryot's foe. It is not a little extraordinary to me that the Indian Government should offer indiscriminate rewards for the extermination of one of the most beautiful, and not the least useful, of living creatures. Hardly however is the man taken seriously who deprecates the destruction of anything so distinctively Indian as the tiger, and I lifted up my voice in vain upon the great cat's behalf in the Viceroy's Legislative Council.