222 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



all his life in the pursuit of these animals, will allow such to 

 be the case ; and all sportsmen out at that season must have 

 seen stags with full-grown horns during the hot weather and 

 rains, when they are supposed to have shed them. Hornless 

 stags are seen at that season, but the great majority have per- 

 fect heads. I have also known certain stags for successive 

 years always about the same locality, and which I have repeat- 

 edly stalked at intervals during this time along with natives 

 who constantly saw them, so that I could not be mistaken as 

 to the individual ; and all the time they never once dropped 

 their horns. 



One of these was a very peculiar animal, almost jet black 

 in colour, and with large horns so white as to look almost like 

 a cast pair bleached by the weather. He frequented, during 

 several years I knew him, an open part of the Mona valley, a 

 good deal resorted to by wood, and grass cutters. He never 

 could be found like other stags in the morning ; but seemed 

 to lie down before daylight in some strategical position whence 

 he always managed to effect an escape without being seen till 

 far out of shot. I had never even fired at him though I had 

 seen him often, when very early one morning I was walking 

 over the grassy plain where he was often seen, and some cart- 

 men who were loading hay told me they had seen a stag lie 

 down on the side of a hillock not far off. I made a long 

 circuit to get to the other side of it, and then slowly, inch by 

 inch and with beating heart, drew myself over the brow. 

 Nothing was to be seen from there, and, with finger on the 

 trigger of my little single "Henry," I crawled down the 

 slope. Just then a stick cracked on my left, and looking 



is now recognized as inhabiting all India, including the Oeroiv of the Hima- 

 layas, and that I believe, after inspecting large collections of horns, &c, it 

 nowhere attains greater development than in Central India. 



