31 AUGUST 1944, Page 13

GENIUS OF THE JUNGLE

Sm,—Sir William Beach Thomas's recent paragraph on "a certain genius of the jungle " can refer, by copious internal evidence, only to James Corbett, of Kaladhungi, whom I have watched as he summoned and repelled the sambhur by voicing their own cries. Some of Corbett's feats have appeared in the Jndian Press ; such incidents, for instance, as his killing of a hamadryad with a stone, to avoid a gunshot that would have disturbed a drowsy tiger which he was about to observe. But much more has never been written. Few people know that when, after months of painful tracking, he shot the notorious man-eating leopard of Garhwal (which had then over too human victims) he was deliberately pacing down one of its known haunts with a few thicknesses of mackintosh' cloth over his shoulders, expecting to be seized from behind, and trusting to the cloth to take some of the worst effects of clawing, and to his own strength, speed and marksmanship to du the rest.

James Corbett's courage, kindliness and unequalled intimacy with jungle birds and beasts are aspects of a character that deserves to be