332 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



beaten for bears, pea and jungle-fowl in Orissa and Chota 

 Nagpoor. 



In my own estimation the " bara-singha " is the noblest 

 deer of the country. Almost rivalling in size the " sambur," 

 it surpasses the latter in beauty of form and colour, and 

 nearly matches the axis, that Adonis of the woods, in grace 

 and general comeliness, while it exceeds it in strength, height, 

 and bulk. The antlers of a full-grown stag have ordinarily 

 twelve tines (whence it takes its name in Hindostanee), and 

 these are sometimes of considerable breadth and stoutness, 

 nor'is it uncommon to find them with fourteen, while I have 

 seen some of even sixteen. This fine deer consorts in herds 

 of ten to thirty, forty, or even more, and is to be found on 

 extensive open grass plains lying around marshes and lakes, 

 it being fond of the vicinity of water, from which charac- 

 teristic it is commonly known in Bengal as the marsh-deer. 

 I have seen as many as fifty or sixty grazing together in the 

 glades between woods growing on the grassy slopes at the 

 foot of the Himalayas. It is very abundant in Assam, where 

 it attains to a great size, and it used to be numerous in Cachar 

 and Sylhet, close to Silchar in the former, and especially in 

 the " Hakkalookee " plains in the latter district, but is found 

 there no longer, and is fast disappearing from Bengal, there 

 being but a few left in Julpigoree, Maldah, Dinagepoor, and 

 the " Soonderbuns." I have never met with one of them in 

 the last-named tract, but am informed by competent authorities 

 that it is to be found in some open spaces and swamps in 

 the midst of those gloomy forests, associating with wild buffa- 

 loes and hogs. 



The great Rusa stag or " sambur " of the Lower Pro- 

 vinces is not the noble creature of Central India and the 

 Blue Mountains of the Madras Presidency, and although plen- 

 tiful in the Chittagong hill tracts, some parts of Orissa and 

 Chota Nagpoor, or Parasnath, and all along the base of the 

 Himalayas, as well as on the Kusia and Jyntea range, it rarely 

 carries a head of remarkable size and beauty. This fine deer 

 associates in parties of ten or a dozen, preferring the woods 



