224 A GRAND SET OF HORNS. 



the other shoulder, and brings him down on his chest. As 

 we stand up and move towards him, the terrified brute, 

 in his endeavours to escape, actually shoves himself along 

 with his hind-legs down the steep grassy declivity before 

 him. At the bottom of this we find him lying, panting 

 and glaring wildly at us, as if quite prepared to make use 

 of his ponderous horns, which he tosses in such a menacing 

 manner as to make the orthodox rites rather difficult to 

 perform. 



Although not so fine a stag as the lost beauty, inasmuch 

 as he had only ten points, yet the dimensions of his grand 

 massive horns are, I think, worth recording. Length, nearly 

 42 inches; girth at the thinnest part of the beam, between 

 the bez (or bay) antler and median tine, 7 J inches ; girth 

 round the burr, 10 J inches; round the bez antler, three or 

 four inches from the beam, 5J inches, and brow antlers 

 nearly as thick ; span inside the beams, 3 3 inches. All the 

 points were perfect. 



From this place we returned to Nouboog. On reaching 

 it we found that the dried-up grass on the heights about it 

 had just been set fire to, which ruined all chance of further 

 sport there. I had my suspicions as to who had raised this 

 conflagration. At night the effect produced by the burning 

 was truly grand, as the fire crept slowly on in long irregular 

 lines, some of them many hundred yards in length. Here 

 it shot up high in quivering tongues of flame as it ignited 

 some dead old resinous pine-trunk and licked along its 

 withered branches, casting a lurid glow on the murky clouds 

 of smoke that hovered above. There, like streams of molten 

 lava, it crept down the mountain-side, or flickered and 

 smouldered in isolated spots on the dark devasted expanse 

 where the raging element had already spent its fury and 

 passed on. One would suppose that such fires ought to 

 utterly destroy every tree in a forest; but here, strange to 

 say, comparatively little damage is done to the timber. 



In Indian forests, after the trees have attained a certain 



