132 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



horns to enable them to get through the dense tangle with 

 greater ease. But this, on the other hand, does not explain 

 the decrease in the size of heads of the red deer in Scotland, 

 where the deer " forests " are absolutely treeless and 

 destitute of any scrubby growth which would afford an 

 impediment to the horns of the stags. 



One of the best methods of securing sambhar or of 

 watching them, a pastime I was much addicted to, was to 

 sit up in a machan over a salt-lick. The animals used to 



resort at night to 



s^~ these areas, a saline 



deposit of varying but 

 usually small extent 

 on the surface of the 

 ground, and on moon- 

 light nights it was 

 most interesting to 

 watch such places. 

 Many hours I passed 

 in a machan situated 

 in a little nullah just 

 off the Tista River 

 where it debouches 

 from the hills into the 

 plains. There was a 

 famous salt-lick here 

 which was resorted 

 to by numberless 



animals, and the attendances enabled me to form a fair idea 

 of the abundance of wild life in that area. Of course I was 

 not always successful in my vigils. On certain bitterly cold 

 nights in the winter I remember passing some very miserable 

 hours, vowing that I would never again give up a night 

 between the blankets in a warm bed for such a questionable 

 form of amusement. But the vow always appeared a 

 foolish one a day or two later, and the fascination exerted 

 by the jungle folk and their ways invariably drew me back 

 again and again. 



I remember with peculiar vividness one particularly 

 cold night just before Christmas, both on account of the 

 petrifying cold and because it was one of the few occasions, 

 I think the only one, on which I saw a tiger at this particular 

 place. A party of men from the garrison in Darjiling were 



