But the grazing is the chief difficulty, now that the old communal lands are being swallowed up by the Forest Department. The villagers may earn a few pence by cutting grass for the contractor who carts it away to the city, but the hungry buffaloes look up and are not fed. Even where a grazing allotment is made, it is too small, and I was in a village fifteen miles from Poona where the twelve families could afford to keep only one buffalo between them, and they had to pay rent to the Forest Department for the right of grazing that one buffalo and a few goats upon little patches of the vast hillsides, all of which they regarded as the common lands of the village for centuries past. The rent, no doubt, was very small, probably only a few shillings a year for the buffalo and goats, but the village income was very small too. From the bureaucracy’s well-intentioned schemes, other peculiar results arise which perhaps did not occur to those who framed the laws. One case, for instance, was mentioned to me by several villagers as a kind of typical or proverbial absurdity. A waggon broke its wheel and the owner began to mend it. The village police, hearing the hammer, arrested him under Section E, paragraph 109 (or some such clause) of the Forest Laws, upon the charge of practising carpentry within a mile of the forest limit. In his innocence, he asked what he ought to have done to get his waggon home over the few hundred yards to his door. He was informed that he ought to have walked into Poona, twenty or thirty miles away, discovered the office of the Forest Department, waited till the proper official, who would very likely be in the country, returned to town, stated his case, and asked for a legal certificate authorizing him to cut timber for the repairs of his wheel on the spot. Then, with good luck, within a week or ten days from the accident, he might have found himself in a position to drive his waggon home in accordance with bureaucratic regulations. I believe, however, that this rule has now been modified, and that the man would only have to hunt a forest ranger for permission. But take another grievance, which recalls childhood’s memories of the Norman Conquest. The ryot’s little wealth of crop and stock is continually exposed to wild beasts—deer, wolves, panthers, and boars—just as our farmers’ crops are exposed to hares and rabbits. But under the Arms Act, the ryot has little chance of killing them himself. His duty is to walk into the nearest town and report the presence of a wild beast to the police. The police look round for an Englishman who wants something to kill. Frequently they advertise for one in the local papers, and usually they have not to wait very long. Off goes the Englishman—rifle, tiffin-basket, boy, bedding, and all. But in the meantime it is not improbable that the wild beast has walked away, or founded a whole new family even worse than himself. At the best, it is just possible that the Englishman may miss him.