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FOUR-HORNED ANTELOPE. 



CHAPTER V 



The Indian Fauna 



India, together with Burma and the Malay countries and a portion of China, forms 

 the Oriental or Indian region of zoological geography. But in a work of the 

 present nature it will be convenient to treat India by itself, and at the same time 

 to ignore the zoological provinces into which it is divided by the students of 

 geographical distribution. In this sense the Indian area extends from the Indus to 

 the Bramaputra, and embraces the whole Indo-Gangetic plain and the entire 

 peninsula, tin; northern boundary of the tract being formed by the great barrier of 

 tin- I limalaya. 



The vegetation, climate, and other physical conditions differ enormously in 

 different parts, but since a large number of readers are probably more or less 

 intimately acquainted with these variations, it will scarcely be necessary to 

 describe them in these pages, and the consideration of the numerous remarkable 

 types of animal life met with in this vast area is accordingly entered upon without 

 any preliminary matter of this nature. 



chitai or One of the most characteristic, and at the same time one of the 



spotted Deer, handsomest, of the larger Indian mammals is the chitai, or spotted 

 deer (Cervus axis), which is distributed over a large extent of the mainland, and 

 also occurs in Ceylon. In size this species may be said to be medium, the stags in 

 in .rthern and central India standing about 3G or 38 inches at the shoulder,and measur- 

 ing nearly G feet in length, although in southern India they are somewhat smaller. 

 The antlers of the stags, which are commonly about 30 inches long, although a 



