130 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



an indescribable variety of delicate shades of purple and 

 violet in tlie evening sun, while broad belts of shadow 

 thrown across the green slopes at the foot, and gathering 

 in the recesses of the ravines, seem to project the 

 glowing summits of the rocks to an unnatural height in 

 the soft orange-tinted sky. 



Here I ascertained the existence of the Bara-Singha, 

 or twelve-tined deer [Rucervus Duvaucellii), an animal 

 which, like the Sal forest in which it lives, had been 

 supposed not to extend to the west of the Sal belt in 

 the Mandla district. I was not so fortunate as to shoot 

 a stag myself in this place ; but I shot two does, and 

 saw a frontlet of the male in the possession of a native 

 shikari, with the unmistakable antlers attached. Since 

 then, too, I have heard of a fine stag being shot there 

 by a railway Engineer. I believe they are not very 

 numerous here ; inded, the Sal forest, to which I believe 

 their range is confined, covers an area of only a few 

 square miles. 



1 also found that the red jungle-fowl of North- 

 eastern India {G. ferrugineus) inhabits this Sal forest 

 and the hills around it, although, so far as I am aware, 

 it is not found anywhere else in these hills further west 

 than the great Sal belt of Mandla. The other species 

 of jungle-fowl, which properly belongs to Western 

 and Southern India {G. Sonneratii), is also to be met 

 with on the Puchmurree hills ; and I have shot both 

 species in the same day in the ravine where the Mahadeo 

 Cave is situated. The red fowl could hardly be dis- 

 tinguished from many a specimen of the domesticated 

 race either in appearance or voice, while the gray fowl 

 does not crow like a cock, and is, I think, a much 

 handsomer bird than the red. His peculiar hackles. 



