INTRODUCTORY. 29 



that tlie wild buffalo should have disappeared when 

 his range had been reduced, by the clearance of the 

 intermediate forest, to the narrow limits of this small 

 valley. So large and prominent an animal requires 

 a much larger range than deer and birds ; and there 

 is no part of the surrounding country suitable for his 

 habits until we reach the Sal tracts again, though 

 very probably the extensive black soil plains of the 

 Narbada valley were so before they were cleared. In 

 corroboration of the probability of his formerly having 

 extended further down the valley than at present, skulls 

 and horns have been found in the upper gravels of 

 the Narbadd in no way differing, except in superior 

 size, from those of the existing species. Their greater 

 size is not surprising, as they are not larger than the 

 horns still occasionally met with in Assam, where also 

 the average size is now rapidly diminishing under the 

 attacks of sportsmen. 



Two other large representatives of the eastern and 

 western faunas, the wild elephant and the Asiatic lion, 

 also appear to have formerly extended far into this 

 region. In modern times, however, the advance of 

 cultivation and the persecutions of the hunter have 

 driven them both almost out of the country I am 

 describing. The former, in the time of Akber (as is 

 ascertained from Abiil Fuzl's chronicles), ranged as far 

 west as Asirgarh, but is now confined to the extreme 

 east of the province. Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador 

 from James I. to the Court of the Great Mogul, in the 

 seventeenth century, speaks of the lion as being then 

 common in the Narbada valley. It is now seldom heard 

 of further east than Rajputana ; although a solitary 

 specimen sometimes appears in their old haunts further 



