36 JO URNAL, BOMB A Y NA TUBAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. IX. 



him once more, standing uneasily at gaze, about 80 yards off down 

 hill. The raising of the rifle caught his eye, and he was off. I put 

 in practice a dodge which 1 have often found efficacious. I chose a 

 well-marked opening between two rocks ahead, on the other side of 

 which I calculated from his direction that he must soon pass, and I 

 covered that opening carefully. As his form appeared, I pulled and 

 heard the welcome and unmistakable thud. He kept on, now quite 

 out of sight, but very soon a crash and a sound of struggling and of 

 flying stones told me he was mine. Joyously I scrambled down to 

 find him dying with the little *450 Henry bullet in the centre of his 

 shoulder. Another through the heart put him out of pain. When 

 the shikari arrived we cached the stag, to be recovered next day. 

 The head proved not so fine as it had appeared in life (they hardly 

 ever do I think), but it is considerably over the average for these parts. 

 The horns are nearly symmetrical — left 3S|", right 38" ; the spread 

 between the points of the outer (shorter) tines is 34", and that from 

 outside to outside of the beam, at the point of widest spread, is 37f ". 

 The brow antlers are 15^" ; the circumference of the beam, from above 

 the brow antlers all the way up to the spring of the tines, is 6", and 

 at the latter point it is 8". Below the brow antlers the circumference 

 is 8f '', and that of the burr is 10". 



The shikari said that from his point of vantage he had viewed 

 a fair stag into a ravine hard by. I sent the shikari to walk up 

 the bed of the ravine from the river and took up my post to 

 command the upper end and flanks of the cover. Two stags raced 

 out, and I had a good clear shot, and dropped the finer of the 

 two like a shot hare. His impetus turned him over twice, and un- 

 fortunately the right horn, catching on a ledge of protruding rock, 

 was smashed to bits. The head was so much poorer than the one 

 I had just got that I was easily consoled. While standing over 

 him I heard loud cries from the shikari, which brought me to 

 the bank of the ravine above him, to find him treed by a huge 

 boar, who was furiously ripping at the trunk of the rather small tree 

 in which the man had taken refuge. I speedily released the shikari 

 from his precarious perch by slaying the boar. It was said to be a 

 well-known brute, who had been a terror to the frequenters of the 

 forest and had killed a man not long before, and it was reported had 

 eaten him. By this time the short February day was deepening into 



