It is very noticeable throughout the bazaars of Burma that all the beef butchers are natives of India. No Burman will kill a cow or a bullock, and no Burman will sell its meat. It is otherwise with pork and fowls. Burmans may sometimes be found selling these; and fish are almost invariably sold by the wives of the fishermen. During the king's time, any man who was even found in possession of beef was liable to very severe punishment. The only exception, as I have explained elsewhere, was in the case of the queen when expecting an addition to her family, and it was necessary that she should be strengthened in all ways. None, not even foreigners, were allowed to kill beef, and this law was very stringently observed. Other flesh and fish might, as far as the law of the country went, be sold with impunity. You could not be fined for killing and eating goats, or fowls, or pigs, and these were sold occasionally. It is now ten years since King Thibaw was overthrown, and there is now no law against the sale of beef. And yet, as I have said, no respectable Burman will even now kill or sell beef. The law was founded on the beliefs of the people, and though the law is dead, the beliefs remain. It is true that the taking of life is against Buddhist commands. No life at all may be taken by him who adheres to Buddhistic teaching. Neither for sport, nor for revenge, nor for food, may any animal be deprived of the breath that is in it. And this is a command wonderfully well kept. There are a few exceptions, but they are known and accepted as breaches of the law, for the law itself knows no exceptions. Fish, as I have said, can be obtained almost everywhere. They are caught in great quantities in the river, and are sold in most bazaars, either fresh or salted. It is one of the staple foods of the Burmese. But although they will eat fish, they despise the fisherman. Not so much, perhaps, as if he killed other living things, but still, the fisherman is an outcast from decent society. He will have to suffer great and terrible punishment before he can be cleansed from the sins that he daily commits. Notwithstanding this, there are many fishermen in Burma. A fish is a very cold-blooded beast. One must be very hard up for something to love to have any affection to spare upon fishes. They cannot be, or at all events they never are, domesticated, and most of them are not beautiful. I am not aware that they have ever been known to display any attachment to anyone, which accounts, perhaps, for the comparatively lenient eye with which their destruction is contemplated. For with warm-blooded animals it is very different. Cattle, as I have said, can never be killed nor their meat sold by a Burman, and with other animals the difficulty is not much less.