91 



swamp deer of Central India, that is, they have one brow antler and 

 five branches at top : in fact, six points on each horn, making up 

 the number which their native name " bara singah" or tivelve- 

 horned, signifies. 



Jerdou, vide page 254 of his book, gives the color of the female 

 swamp deer as a " pale dun or whity brown color." The dear old 

 comrade (now a general officer) mentioned at page 23 of these 

 notes, as having killed an elephant near Bogatha in Burmah, may, 

 if he ever reads this book, call to recollection, that while he was 

 doing the state good service about this very place Daraconda and 

 in the Golcondah Zemindary, he saw (or killed, I forget which, and 

 no wonder for it was while I was a subaltern) " a WHITE samber" 

 This was doubtless a bara singah or swamp deer in its winter dress. 



All this has however little to say to the samber proper and 

 should therefore have been entered under No. 57. Those who 

 read these notes must remember that their writer is unacquainted 

 with book-making, and pardon irregularities of this kind. So let 

 us return to our legitimate subject the samber. 



When I commenced these notes I intended to have avoided all 

 reference to field sports : for fascinating and ever varying though 

 they be to those who follow them in any way from rat-hunting 

 upwards, and in rat-hunting, I dare to say, most British sportsmen 

 have taken their first degree ; there is an awful sameness in all 

 accounts of sport, but as I have often revelled both in the " prose' > 

 and "poetry" of the sport, he mentions, and have within the last three 

 hours admired a magnificent illustration by Nature of the latter, I 

 trust I maybe excused if I quote from the South of India Observer* 

 of the 20th August 1868, the following description by HAWKEYE, 

 who in addition to being one of the best sportsmen on the Madras 

 side of India, is one of our best soldiers in every reading of that 

 most lovable word, and who, as he has known me, since I was an 

 Ensign, "and mine before me," will, I doubt not, pardon my making 

 use of his notes, which after all are as much illustrations of Natural 

 history as of field sports, and which certainly are far better pictures 

 than I could have drawn with my own feeble pen : 



* A newspaper published at Oqjacamund, Neilgherries, 



