Excerpt from A Hunter's Life Among Lions, Elephants, and Other Wild Animals of South Africa Mr. Roualeyn Gordon Gumming, the Nimrod of modern times, is a native of Scotland, and connected with the noble family of Argyll. His passion for the chase seems to have developed itself very early in youth, for long before he went to Eton to complete his studies, his room was a museum of hunting trophies. In the county of Moray, in the western part of Scotland, where his boyhood was spent, he was soon noted for his indefatigable devotion to the sports of the field, and his fondness for natural history. "Salmon-fishing and deer-stalking," he says, "were my favorite amusements; and during these early wanderings by wood and stream, the strong love of sport and admiration of nature in her wildest and most attractive forms, became with me an all-absorbing feeling, and my greatest possible enjoyment was to pass whole days, and many a summer night in solitude, where, undisturbed, I might contemplate the silent grandeur of the forest and the ever-varying beauty of the scenes around." After completing his studies at Eton, he entered the Indian army, and was attached to the Madras Light Cavalry. Sailing in 1839 to join his regiment, he touched at the Cape of Good Hope on the voyage out, and there made his first essays in that field wherein he has since become so famous. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This study assesses the significance of the hunting cult as a major element of the imperial experience in Africa and Asia. Through a study of the game laws and the beginnings of conservation in the 19th and early-20th centuries, the author demonstrates the racial inequalities which existed between Europeans and indigenous hunters. Africans were denied access to game, and the development of game reserves and national parks accelerated this process. Indigenous hunters in Africa and India were turned into "poachers" and only Europeans were permitted to hunt. In India, the hunting of animals became the chief recreation of military officers and civilian officials, a source of display and symbolic dominance of the environment. Imperial hunting fed the natural history craze of the day, and many hunters collected trophies and specimens for private and public collections as well as contributing to hunting literature. Adopting a radical approach to issues of conservation, this book links the hunting cult in Africa and India to the development of conservation, and consolidates widely-scattered material on the importance of hunting to the economics and nutrition of African societies.

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A poignant and piercing examination of the phenomenon of tears—exhaustive, yes, but also open-ended. . . A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book." —Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias "Spellbinding and propulsive—the map of a luminous mind in conversation with books, songs, friends, scientific theories, literary histories, her own jagged joy, and despair. Heather Christle is a visionary writer." —Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks This bestselling "lyrical, moving book: part essay, part memoir, part surprising cultural study" is an examination of why we cry, how we cry, and what it means to cry from a woman on the cusp of motherhood confronting her own depression (The New York Times Book Review). Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen–tear–shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear–collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence. Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle’s investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.