No. 58, Page 83. Rusa Aristotelis. 

 The great rusa, Sam bur. 



This grand stag is too well known to require any description 

 from me. 



Since the notes at page 84 were written, my experience on the 

 Neilgherry Hills leads me to agree with HAWKEYE that the flesh of 

 the sambur, if kept sufficiently long, is excellent. 



Unless one has been on the happy hunting grounds, he writes of 

 at page 92, it is impossible to appreciate his minute and thoroughly 

 correct description ; let me however corroborate it. My most 

 difficult stalking has been to avoid, not to kill, the " fag" or the 

 hinds mentioned at pages 96 and 100 : on one occasion I had to spend 

 a most interesting but uncomfortable hour while a hind and calf 

 snugly reposed in a warm sheltered nook within 50 yards of ray 

 bitterly cold position. They had evidently been alarmed by some 

 forest foe, probably a tiger or wild dog, but were luckily looking 

 in the opposite direction when I turned the angle of a hill close to 

 them. The wind was in my favor, but they completely barred my 

 movements, for if they had been startled they would have spread 

 the alarming tidings through their relations. Dropping on the 

 ground, I had only to watch and wait : after some time the young 

 one, easily satisfied, laid down, but his more wary mother continu- 

 ed to stand and gaze long and anxiously at the opposite hill-side, 

 and even when she did at last follow his example, her eyes and ears 

 were kept so keenly on the alert that I dared not move, and, while 

 watching her, had the bitter disappointment of seeing a very hand- 

 some stag returning to his lair in the wood through the very gorge 

 she thus cut me off from. Although foreign to the subject, one of 

 those strikingly interesting pictures by nature which few but 

 sportsmen can ever witness, may be here mentioned. While 

 lazily watching the hind and calf through my glass, there were 

 besides these deer at one time in the field of the instrument three 

 or four of the handsome grey jungle fowl of Southern India, 

 " Gallus Sonneratii" and one of the fine Neilgherry black monkeys 

 or " langurs" page 167. All when taken with the magnificent hill 

 scenery and brilliantly tinted woodlands of the Neilgherries com- 



