220 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



most of the nilgae from the ground within easy reach of 

 cantonments ; but a dozen miles or so along the base of 

 the hills, either west or east, brought them within reach 

 of the sportsman. 



Of course, these large antelope are a perfect scourge to 

 the cultivators whose fields lie near their haunts, and are 

 subject to the depredations of Portax pictus, or, as he 

 has lately been quaintly but suitably renamed, Boselaphus 

 tragocamelus, So it was quite a common thing, on cutting 

 one up, to discover a native bullet or slug embedded in 

 its flesh, enclosed in a cyst of hardened gristly tissue. The 

 blue-bull is a strange creature indeed, with his high withers, 

 lean horse-like head, thick crest, drooping quarters, and 

 cow-like tail, and very similar in build to many African 

 antelopes. What a trophy he would afford did he only 

 grow horns in accord with his enormous bulk horns, for 

 instance, like those of the sable antelope of Africa, whom 

 he in many ways resembles ! 



The range of hills lying to the north of Junglypur were 

 at one time the home of many bison, but, what with the 

 unremitting attention of sportsmen, the insidious and con- 

 tinual attacks of the poaching native, and the enclosing of 

 their haunts within forest reserves, by which the jungles 

 are preserved from the annual conflagrations so beneficial 

 to the grass and other food products of the wild bull, 

 these grand animals have dwindled in numbers till, to 

 prevent their utter extermination, rules have been framed 

 to limit the number allowed to be shot to two bulls per 

 annum. These measures have, it is believed, been bene- 

 ficial, and although these unburnt, dry, grass -choked 

 reserves can never now support more than a very limited 

 number of gaur, their further destruction has been stayed. 



Illustrative of " life's little ironies," I was once out in 

 those hills, about half a day's ride from cantonments, 

 with a friend who had secured the permission, so difficult 

 to obtain, to shoot one of the bison allowed that year, 



