Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was
well known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name
of Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural history subjects.
Those who were privileged to know him intimately, as the writer of
this sketch did, knew him as a Christian gentleman of singular
simplicity and modesty and great charm of manner. He was always ready
to help a fellow-worker in science or philanthropy if it were possible
for him to do so...
Concerning Animals And Other Matters
By E.H. Aitken ("EHA")
Author Of "Five Windows Of The Soul," "Tribes On My Frontier," Etc.
With A Memoir Of The Author By Surgeon-General W.B. Bannerman
I.M.S., C.S.I.
With Illustrations By J A. Shepherd And A Portrait
London
John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
1914
Special thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors of the Strand
Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine and Times of India for their courtesy in
permitting the reprinting of the articles in this book which originally
appeared in their columns.
"EHA"- Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was well known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name of Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural ...
- "EHA". Part 2
- The above imperfect sketch fails to give the charm and magnetic attraction of the man, and for this one must go to his works, which for those who knew him are very illuminating in this respect. ...
- "EHA". Part 3
- Mr. Aitken was a deeply religious man, and was for some twenty years an elder in the congregation of the United Free Church of Scotland in Bombay. He was for some years Superintendent of the ...
- Feet And Hands
- It is evident that, in what is called the evolution of animal forms, the foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on the dry landthat is, with the frogs. How it ...
- Feet And Hands. Part 2
- To a man who thinks, it is very interesting to observe that beasts have been led along gradually in the very same direction. All the common beasts, such as cats, dogs, rats, stoats, and so on, ...
- Feet And Hands. Part 3
- But what ages of concentration on the thought and practice of assassination must have been required to perfect that most awful weapon in Nature, the paw of a tiger, or, indeed, of any cat, for ...
- Bills Of Birds
- The prospectus, or advertisement, of a certain American typewriting machine commences by informing the public that The typewriter is founded on an idea. When I saw this phrase I ...
- Bills Of Birds. Continued
- Compared with all these, the birds that can do with a diet of fruit only lead an easy life. They have just to pluck and eatthat is, if they are pleased with small fruits and content to ...
- Tails
- The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent ...
- Tails. Part 2
- Then there is the beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, ...
- Tails. Part 3
- If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this ...
- Noses
- Some may think that I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of ...
- Noses. Part 2
- Nay, we may go further. The mental emotions excited by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything ...
- Noses. Part 3
- But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with that of a horse you will note at once that the nostrils are in advance of the lips, and have a kind of portal to themselves....
- Ears
- Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of ...
- Ears. Part 2
- But when a beast lives on land the conditions are all altered, and then the ear blossoms out into an infinite variety of forms and sizes, from each of which the true naturalist may divine the ...
- Ears. Part 3
- There is another mysterious ear which is a stumbling-block to the simple theory-monger. It is in fashion among a tribe of bats to which belongs the so-called vampire of India. This monster is ...
- The Story Of An Owl
- Among the many and various strangers within my gates who have helped to enliven the days of my exile, Tommy was one towards whom I still feel a certain sense of obligation because he taught me ...
- The Barn Owl. A Friend Of Man
- A thunderstorm has burst on the common rat. Its complicity in the spread of the plague, which has been proved up to the hilt, has filled the cup of its iniquities to overflowing, and we have ...
- The Barn Owl. A Friend Of Man. Continued
- But granting that the owls did twice the injury to game with which they are credited, it would be repaid many times over by their services. Waterton well says that, if we knew its utility in ...
- Domestic Animals
- Long before Jubal became the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ and Tubalcain the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but the sacred ...
- Domestic Animals. Continued
- But however their outward aspects may differ, they are of the same blood and know it. A featherweight bantam cock will stand up to an elephantine brahma and fight him according to the rules of ...
- Snakes
- I have met persons, otherwise quite sane, who told me that they would like to visit India if it were not for the snakes. Now there is something very depressing in the thought that this ...
- Snakes. Continued
- Finally a council is held and a unanimous resolution recorded that deceased was a serpent of the deadliest kind. This is not a lie, for they believe it; but in the great majority of cases it is ...
- The Indian Snake-Charmer
- We must wait for another month or two before we can think of the winter in this country in the past tense, but in India the month of March is the beginning of the hot season, and the tourists ...
- The Indian Snake-Charmer. Continued
- What the snake-charmer is by race or origin ethnologists may determine when they have done with the gipsy. He is not a Hindu. No particular part of the country acknowledges him as its native. He ...
- Cures For Snake-Bite
- In a little book on the snakes of India, published many years ago by Dr. Nicholson of the Madras Medical Service, the conviction was expressed that the snake-charmers of Burmah knew of some ...
- Cures For Snake-Bite. Continued
- It is many years now since the news was brought to me one day that a man whom I knew very well had been bitten by a deadly serpent and was dying. He was a fine, strongly built young fellow, a ...
- The Cobra Bungalow. A Story Of A Moneylender
- Beharil Surajmul was the greatest moneylender in Dowlutpoor. He was a man of rare talents. He remembered the face of every man who had at any time come to borrow money of him since he began to ...
- The Cobra Bungalow. A Story Of A Moneylender. Part 2
- At the base of one of the old cracked walls of the shrine there was a hole which was the den of a very large, black cobra. Several times it had been seen in the garden, and, when pursued, had ...
- The Cobra Bungalow. A Story Of A Moneylender. Part 3
- The Malee answered, Chh, Chh! There is no mate of this cobra, but his tone was not confident. Go, cried Beharilalgo quickly and call Nagoo, the snake-charmer. He has ...
- The Panther I Did Not Shoot
- It was January 13 of a good many years ago, in those happy days that have gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. The sun had scarcely risen, and I was sitting in the cosy cabin ...
- The Panther I Did Not Shoot. Continued
- It has gone to the fort, said the menbags always go to the fort. I pointed out that, if it had meant to go to the fort, it would have gone towards the fort, instead of in another ...
- The Purbhoo
- I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall ...
- The Purbhoo. Continued
- Then the Brahmin woke up, for he saw that he was in evil case. The spirit of the British raj was falling like a blight and a pestilence upon the means by which he had lived, drying up the ...
- The Coconut Tree
- Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the ...
- The Coconut Tree. Part 2
- How little we can conceive the spaces in his life that would be empty without that firm pulp, at once nutritious, sweet and fragrant! Curry cannot be made without it, the cook cannot advance ...
- The Coconut Tree. Part 3
- His waistcloth is tightly girded about him, in his hand he carries a broad billhook as bright and keen as a razor, and from his caudal region depends a tail more strange than any borne by beast ...
- The Betel Nut
- One half the world does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the peculiar properties of the areca nut werein ...
- The Betel Nut. Continued
- Finally, when everybody is reeking with incongruous odours and trying not to be sick, a silver tray appears with the daintiest little packets of pan supari, each pinned with a clove, and ...
- A Hindu Festival
- Poets may sing, Let the ape and tiger die, but they are not quite dead yet, only caged, and where is the man in whose bosom there lurks no ...
- A Hindu Festival. Continued
- Her children are tricked out with more fancy. The little brown girl, who yesterday had not one square inch of cloth on the whole of her tiny person, comes out a petite miss in a crimson ...
- Indian Poverty. The Standard Of Living
- When Mr. Keir Hardie was in India he satisfied himself that the standard of living among the working classes in India has been deteriorating. This is interesting psychologically, and one would ...
- Indian Poverty. The Standard Of Living. Continued
- It is therefore a very grave charge that Mr. Keir Hardie brings against the British Administration when he says, a century after these words were written, that the standard of living among the ...
- Borrowed Indian Words
- Of the results of the Roman supremacy in Britain none have been so permanent as their influence on our language. No doubt this was less due to any direct effect that their residence among the ...
- Borrowed Indian Words. Continued
- More interest attaches to Gymkhana, for neither the word nor the thing which it signifies is Indian, though both originated in India, and the derivation of the word is unknown, though it is ...
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