134 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



the vigour of their applications of long bamboos across 

 his back. I never could kill him, though I tried every 

 conceivable plan. One night I might have shot him as 

 he passed along below the raised plinth of the house in 

 the moonlight ; but of course I had seized the only 

 unloaded gun in the rack in the hurry, and the locks 

 snapped harmlessly within a foot of his back. He was 

 shot by a shikari after I had left the hill. 



Coursing foxes was another great amusement. A 

 colony of the pretty little fox of the plains * inhabited a 

 small open glade a little to the west of my camp. They 

 had a great many burrows almost in the centre of the 

 plain, all of which appeared to run into each other. I 

 never failed to unearth one or more foxes here by the 

 aid of " Pincher," a minute black - and - tan English 

 terrier, with the spirit of a lion, who could get into any 

 of the holes, and would die rather than not get out his 

 fox. Often he showed signs of severe subterranean 

 combats ; and once I thought he was done for, when 

 the greyhounds ran a fox into the very hole he had gone 

 in at. We had to get picks and spades and dig down 

 to him, and we found him lying with one fox before 

 him pinned up in the end of a blind hole, which he had 

 already half killed, and another blocking the way out 

 behind him. Poor gallant little Pincher ! He died of 

 a sunstroke some three months later, from being dragged 

 through a long eighteen-mile march in the hot sun by a 

 brutal dog-boy, without getting a single drop of water. 

 I had two brace of capital greyhounds at that time ; 

 one couple crossed between the English and Kampur 

 breeds, and the other bred from a Scotch deerhouud out 

 of a Buujara bitch. The Indian fox is not above half 

 * Vulpes Bengalensis. 



