Antlers 



giant goats. The stags have naturally a great 

 resemblance to sambhar stags, and at a distance 

 it is always a question, since the barasingha 

 comes in size between the sambhar and the 

 chitul, whether the does are chitul or barasingha, 

 and whether the stags are sambhar or barasingha. 

 A close inspection at distances of 200 yards or so, 

 or closer in long grass, is always necessary to 

 determine the question. 



It is most interesting to watch a herd of these 

 animals troop out of the forest at sundown into 

 the open grass lands. One beautiful, though hot, 

 evening in April in the Central Provinces, I 

 was slowly and silently strolling up a little grass 

 maidan which ran up into an isthmus between the 

 green walls of the sal forest in front of me, when 

 I heard a noisy crackling of dead leaves in the 

 forest to my right front. I sat down on a rock, 

 kept perfectly steady, and watched. A few 

 barasingha does soon approached the edge of the 

 forest, and scouted about just inside, a practice 

 followed by most of the deer tribe before coming 

 out into the open. Indistinctly in the leafy bower 

 I could see a few stags engaged in a similar oper- 

 ation. Once, however, they had made up their 

 minds that all was safe, the whole herd tramped 

 noisily out over the dead leaves, for all the world 

 like a troop of New Forest ponies. They poured 

 out of the forest in a manner totally dissimilar 

 to the usual procedure of a herd of chitul, who 



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