300 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



that was the way the ones that charged me behaved, but the 

 instances are too few to generalize from. I only once found two old 

 bulls together. When the largest received my fire, he rushed at the 

 other one and they began butting each other like a pair of billy- 

 goats. Ou my running up and firing the second barrel, they made 

 off, and I eventually bagged the one I fired at. The second one 

 left the wounded one immediately and went in a different direction. 

 The bull that charged m}^ brother came on with a series of snorts ; 

 the others were silent when chai'ging. A herd never charges ; on 

 one occasion a herd of over twenty, when I fired, came in a 

 compact mass straight for me. I had to fire the second barrel into 

 the brown of them when ten yards off. They opened out and passed 

 close on each side; the last one, a good-sized bull, nearly ran over 

 me, but on my shouting at him he shied violently to one side. This 

 lierd had not the slightest intention of charging, but were merely 

 bolting. They were down in the bottom of a nullah at a 

 waterhole, and when I fired, fled out by the path they had taken 

 down, and as I had tracked them to the spot, I was right in their 

 way. I found the next da} r , some miles off, a cow with a broken 

 shoulder, the result of my shot into the brown. The bone must 

 have given way after some time, as there was no sign of any 

 wounded one at the time. The bull, I first fired at, I never bagged, 

 though I saw the bullet hole, from a 12 bore, behind the shoulder, 

 though too high. I do not think bison drink every day. A solitary bull 

 I followed for three days, and that I wounded the first day, did not 

 go to water that night, or on the second day at all, as I was on his 

 tracks the whole time, and saw him at sunset of the second day, 

 I am sure of this. He drank on the morning of the third day. 

 I was two and a half hours after him the first day, eleven hours on 

 the second day, and ten hours on the third day, twenty-three hours 

 and a half in all steady tracking. On the afternoon of the second 

 clay he went back over exactly the same ground he had come the 

 first day. For several miles he took almost the identical old route, 

 descending the nullahs at the same spot, and at sunset I saw him 

 within a few hundred yards of where I had first fired at him, 26 

 hours before. This seems to show that a bison frequents a particular 

 jungle. On the third day he went straight away for several 

 miles in a different direction. I ought to have got him, but did 

 not. I was several times close to him in long grass, but he only 

 once made any attempt to show fight, and then sheered off on 



