There is sometimes at a sub-division a great opportunity for getting good sport if the assistant is fond of hunting or shooting. Near the principal station of many districts the game is becoming exhausted; but in a remote sub-division there are usually some natural game-preserves which have not been so often invaded by the adventurous English sportsman. As to snipe, he will probably find them in his own garden any time between September and March; and the rice-swamps which come up to the edge of his garden are sure to be full of snipe in different places as the waters of the annual inundation begin to subside. Wild ducks of infinite variety and in numbers innumerable are to be found in some of the quiet inland backwaters branching from the nearest great river. The wild hogs are seldom wanting. The villagers will gladly point out these dangerous enemies to their crops; and if the ground is rideable, some friends with their horses and spears may occasionally be brought together for a good day’s sport. Leopards are to be heard of in many villages, and when a particular leopard makes itself troublesome by killing the goats of the villagers or perhaps scratching and wounding some old woman, the assistant will be asked to go and shoot it. Tigers are scarce animals now; but they roam over large distances, and a tiger sometimes makes its appearance and establishes itself in a village, to the utter dismay of the inhabitants, who see their cattle killed daily, and live in constant apprehension for their own safety. But when a tiger is thus heard of, let the assistant not trust too much to his own prowess, or to the aid of any native companions who are willing to accompany him to kill the tiger. Let him remember the fate of poor Langdon, who went out a few years ago with a single-barrelled gun in his hand and a revolver in his belt to slay a tiger that had taken up its abode in a neighbouring village. He was attended by a crowd of natives armed with matchlocks, swords, and clubs. They formed a sort of line and advanced upon the tiger, who was sitting on his haunches in an open rice-field, looking at them. Poor Langdon fired his single barrel when he was about twenty yards from the tiger. He probably missed the beast, who came down with a bound and seized him by the neck and killed him like a terrier kills a rat. His native companions very naturally took to their heels. They are hardly to be blamed. They had little chance of killing the tiger, and their only safety was in flight. Not long previous to poor Langdon’s death a stray tiger similarly visited another district, and two or three of the young civilians, with a police officer who had shot many tigers, made an expedition to slay it. They found the tiger lying by a little hut in an open field. They approached cautiously, and made certain of their prey. A crowd of gaping villagers watched them from a high bank of earth, which seemed a safe place of refuge.