144 THE CHEETAL AND THE PARAH. 



My own experience of Indian pythons is, that they are 

 not the fierce, bone-crushing creatures they are commonly 

 thought to be, at any rate with regard to human beings. 

 Indeed, from what information I have been able to gather 

 concerning them, they appear to be quite harmless ; their 

 prey chiefly consisting of birds, hares, fawns, and " suchlike 

 small deer." But I never have come across them during 

 the hot season, when they may possibly be more lively. In 

 winter they always seemed to be timid, and usually sluggish, 

 on being disturbed. This may account for our being able to 

 play such pranks with them as we did with impunity. 



From this diversion let us hark back to the putteyr 

 swamp. This time when beating through it we saw neither 

 tiger nor reptile ; nothing but some hog-deer (Axis jporci- 

 mts), called " parah " or " dh5ter " by the natives — an ani- 

 mal about the size of a roe-deer, and not unlike it in its 

 grey winter coat. The buck carries pretty horns, averaging 

 about 14 inches long, with two short upper tines on each 

 horn, and one brow-antler, also short and pointing upwards. 

 This deer usually frequents open tracts of long grass and 

 marshy groiTnd, and is very plentiful in the Terai and Dehra 

 Doon. It affords capital shooting from elephant-back, after 

 the jungle conflagrations in spring, when it can be beaten 

 out into the open from the unburnt patches of long grass. 

 As the shots are almost invariably running ones, it requires 

 sharp and pretty shooting with the rifle to hit such a small 

 mark. 



The spotted deer {Axis maculatus), or cheetal, is very 

 common in the same localities — in fact in almost all Indian 

 forests, from the base of the Himalayas to the sea-coast. 

 It affects thick cover in the forests, or tracts of long grass 

 in their immediate vicinity. In height it stands about 3 

 feet at the shoulder. Its colour somewhat resembles that 

 of the fallow-deer, but the white spots are more clearly 

 defined, and on a darker ground. The ordinary length of 

 its fully developed horns is about 30 inches. They have a 



