AJTTILOPE. 523 



Like most animals of opeu plains, the Indian antelope appears 

 to have no particular hours for feeding, though it generally rests 

 in the middle of the day, I cannot say it never drinks, for I have 

 been assured by several people that it does, but I cannot help 

 suspecting that its visits to the neighbourhood of water are for 

 the purpose of feeding on the fresh grass to be found there. That 

 it can exist without ever drinking is proved by its abundance 

 between the salt Chilka Lake in Orissa and the sea, on a spit of 

 sand 30 miles long, where the only drinking-\\'ater is from a well. 



The speed and endurance of the antelope are well known. 

 Col. W. Campbell, in 'My Indian Journal,' relates how his brother, 

 on a fast Arab horse, once ran down and speared a bucknear Dhar- 

 war, but the feat has not often been repeated. Wounded antelope 

 are often ridden down, but sometimes require a good horse to catch 

 them. I was once completely beaten on fair ground by a buck with 

 a broken fore-leg, but I was on a horse that, although speedy, had 

 but little endurance. Jerdon says : " Very rarely good greyhounds 

 have pulled down this antelope unwounded on ordinary ground ; 

 but there are at least three localities where this coursing used to 

 be practised successfully." The localities were on heavy sand at 

 Pooree in Orissa and at Sirsa in the Punjab, and on fine pasture 

 land at Point Calimere, south of Trichinopoly. Jerdon adds that 

 on soft ground, during the rains, antelope are easily caught by good 

 dogs. He also says : " Greyhounds are very keen after a wounded 

 antelope, and occasionally get savage and fight over it when pulled 

 down." This is confirmed by McMaster. 



The Indian antelope, like the South- African springbok {Oazella 

 eucJiore), has the habit of occasionally springing into the air, all the 

 members of a herd generally bounding, one after the other. This 

 is done, as Sir AV. Elliot has shown, before they are much frightened, 

 and when the herd is first moving off. When at speed the gallop 

 is like that of any other animal. 



Occasionally these antelopes conceal themselves in grass or culti- 

 vation, and wounded animals not unfrequently hide. Young fawns, 

 too, are generally concealed by the mothers. The only sound I 

 have ever heard the buck utter is a peculiar grunt that he makes 

 when excited ; the females have a hissing alarm note, according to 

 Porsyth. Like most other Indian antelopes, they deposit their 

 dung repeatedly on the same spot. 



Like most antelopes, and indeed ruminants in general, this species 

 is easily tamed, if captured young. Many used to be taken in nets 

 or in snares, and one native method of capturing the bucks was to 

 send a tame black buck with nooses attached to his horns into the 

 herd, and to seize the wild one when entangled in the fight which 

 inevitably ensued. The bucks are greatly given to fighting. " The 

 rutting-season," says Mr. Elliot, " commences about February or 

 March, but fawns are seen of all ages at every season. During the 

 spring months the buck often separates a particular doe from the 

 herd, and will not suffer her to join it again, cutting her off and inter- 

 cepting every attempt to mingle with the rest. The two are often 



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