83 



" Brow autlered ruga ;" one very long brow antler, bending 

 down over the face as just mentioned, two branches just above and 

 three at top. 



I fancy that the common samber is sometimes called " bara 

 singha" in the Deccau. I have had a blue bull " nilgai" pointed 

 out to me as a samber by a villager, so there may perhaps in some 

 instances have been mistakes made between the swamp deer or 

 " bara singha" and the samber, especially with the hinds, and in 

 Burmah between the " brow antlered" and the common samber or 

 " rusa." 



Both native hunters and their European employers are often in 

 the habit of calling any large female deer a samber hind and of dis- 

 posing of any small red one as a "jungle sheep." 



No- 58. Rusa Aristotelis. 



JERDON, No. 220, PAGE 256 ; THE GREAT RUSA, SAMBER. 

 I see, at page 258 of Jerdon, that the thickest pair of horns in 

 the Calcutta museum are said to have come from near Cuttack. In 

 the deep, almost impenetrable and, at certain seasons, deadly feverish 

 forests of Goomsoor, the Golcondah Zemindary and other wild back 

 woods of the Northern Circars and of Orissa, samber and spotted 

 deer grow to an enormous size ; for their food is plentiful and they 

 have few enemies except tigers to fear in the dense, thorny thickets 

 which form the undergrowth of their haunts. Even native poachers 

 can do them little harm (not that this should be any reason against 

 the introduction of game laws there, as well as in other parts of 

 India) and the few Europeans, whether soldiers, or civilians who 

 traverse these wilds all do so on duty and are therefore, while well, 

 generally too busy, or if unemployed, almost always too ill from 

 fever to shoot. The largest horns of samber and spotted deer I 

 have ever seen, were in a pile collected for exportation and heaped 

 up in front of a native store house at Cocanada, most of them had 

 been shed in their natural course by the deer and had been picked up 

 by the wild hill people of the Golcondah Zemindary who exchanged 

 them for salt, dried fish and other sea side treasures. I have seen 

 & L milar heaps of horns at some of the other ports on that coast. 



