532 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII, 
or (as I have knowi) on a dog, and therefore presumably upon a 
jackal or wild cat. [he feeble recurved horns can hardly be looked 
upon. as serious weapons. 
Tt is good meat ahd, in the ghits, not so dry as our last beast, 
or most of our other yenison. The evergreen thickets which it loves 
give it more perenni:l green food than our other horned game get ; 
and it probably browses more, and grazes less, than even the four- 
horned Antelope, itself a browser for choice. 
Both are habitually called “ bekad’’ and “ bekri’”? by natives, 
and sometimes “ jungle sheep” by both natives and Huropeans. 
I have mentioned already the curious foot-markings of these two very 
different creatures and of the Blue Bull, not very closely related to either. 
The reason of these has puzzled me long, until I found that I was 
looking at the matter through the eyes of a man, and not of a beast— 
wanting in sympathy in short. 
Most wild animals when they find themselves in presence of foes or 
prey, but suppose themselves unobserved, have the habit of standing 
like statues for a short time, as, indeed, have the best human hunters. 
In the ruminants we call this “ gaze”; in the Carnivora “ point” or 
“set.” But the object is the same in both cases—to observe without 
attracting attention by motion. 
Now, during much of the tropical year the grasses and herbs of 
the forest are dead and dry, perhaps burnt up by forest fires. 
The bushes have a much more perennial foliage. 
Therefore, the Carnivora, none of them animals of lofty stature, 
and mostly given to crouching, more or less get a clearer view of the 
legs of ruminants below the bushes than of their bodies behind, or 
heads over them. We, indeed, commonly see the heads or bodies 
first, but our point of view is different. 
All old shikaris know how seldom a tiger or panther looks up if 
men keep quiet in a tree, and that the eyesight of these creatures, 
though good, is not unerring. 
Now, if we suppose a ruminant animal standing “at gaze” in the 
neighbourhood of a foraging panther, with the advantage of the wind, 
and standing quite still (as he has commonly the sense to do until 
he knows himself discovered), the advantage of the foot and leg 
markings is clear; they break the outline of the leg and make it 
more resemble a bush-stem with lichens, or a bamboo-stem with its 
white foot-markings—signs of age and approaching decay, which 
I have been to-day noting for the purpose of this paper. 
