The Chinkara Gazelle 



locality during a drought, the gazelles used to troop 

 down in numbers to the wooden troughs by the wells, 

 as evidenced by their tracks. There were regular 

 beaten paths made by their footmarks, and they drank 

 under cover of darkness." 



This gazelle is much troubled, during the rainy 

 season, in Harriana, at any rate, by bots under the skin 

 at the root of the tail ; and the following incident, for 

 the truth of which the anonymous author must be 

 responsible, appeared in the Asian newspaper of 

 yth November 1899 : — "While out shooting in the 

 Harriana district during the month of February a 

 couple of years ago, I was greatly interested and amused 

 by the antics of a fox and a herd of chinkara I was 

 stalking. I had got behind a hay-rick about 50 yards 

 from the herd, when I observed a fox cautiously creep 

 out from his burrow and stalk the buck nearest me. 

 On getting to within about a yard of the buck, the 

 fox crouched and commenced shaking: himself from side 

 to side just as a cat does preparatory to springing. 

 The buck prepared to meet the attack by coming to 

 the charge, but hardly had he done so, when the fox 

 sprang at him and caused him to give a big bound to 

 one side. These tactics over, the fox promptly started 

 sniffing about and greedily devouring something he 

 found. The operation I have described above was 

 repeated about a dozen times with different members 

 of the herd, when I cut the proceedings short with a 

 shot. I rolled over the buck I fired at, and o-etting to 

 the place where he lay hunted about to ascertain what 

 the fox had been devouring. I found several whitish 

 grubs, about the size and appearance of a newly formed 

 chrysalis of the wild silkworm, lying about, and was at 

 a loss to know how they came there till the buck I 

 had shot was skinned. I then discovered about fifty 

 or sixty of these grubs [bots] all along the spinal column 

 under the skin, the larger ones partly protruding. 

 Indeed, the skin, when it was removed and stretched, 



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