90 



I have two curious horns of this deer which I found while at 

 Ootacamund in October 1868, and which I intend to present to the 

 Madras Museum. 



Both are " odd?' horns shed by the deer, and picked up in the 

 forest, and to me in both cases the malformations appear to have 

 been caused by a bullet or some accidental blow or wrench when 

 the horn was in " velvet." 



The thicker horn is not quite 24 inches in length, but is 9J inches 

 in circumference, a little above the burr or basal ring. This animal 

 seemed to have had a second basal antler which had however been 

 knocked off by some accident, and this in shortening the growth of 

 what would otherwise have been a gigantic horn,* had caused it to 

 become flattened near the point to a width of three inches, much as 

 is the horn of the fallow deer, " dama vulgaris," above this is the 

 " trifurcate extremity," mentioned by Jerdon, at page 258 of his 

 book. In the other, the point of the horn appears to have been 

 turned off at a right angle from the original direction and to have 

 thus divided horizontally, sending one snag, or prong, back and one, 

 which, presently'forks into two, forwards. While I was in Rangoon, 

 Sir Arthur Phayre gave me a samber's head, which is now in the 

 Madras Museum, and on which a small second brow antler bends 

 down over the forehead and turns in towards the skull. 



Since, at page 82, I wrote my notes on the swamp deer, or bara 

 singah, I have had a pair of horns of that species given to me. The 

 stag to which they belonged had been killed near Daraconda in the 

 Golcondah Zemindary. The few who now remain of those who 

 some years ago were rebel-hunting and fever-catching in those 

 wilds must remember the spot and the water-fall. As this is, to 

 our cost, thoroughly Madras ground ; and as sportsmen from Jub- 

 bulpore, again a Madras station, come on the swamp deer near 

 Mundlah, and as, vide page 255, Jerdon, it has been killed in the 

 highlands of Goomsoor, it may well be counted among the game 

 with which a sportsman from our side of India should be acquainted. 

 These horns from Daraconda are smaller, but otherwise exactly 

 like those I have described at page 82, when writing about the 



* The best authority I know on these matters, however, thinks that this horn 

 belonged to a very old stag long past his prime, VAGRANT. 



