1881.] Mr. Ball on the occurrence of the Lion in Palamow. 3 



balpur on the Mahanadi with which it has been the custom, hitherto, to 

 identify it. Its position was about Lat. 23° 35' Long. 84° 21'. 



Beiragurh, mentioned in the Ain-i-Akbari as having diamond mines, is 

 shown to be identical with Wairagurh in the Chanda district, Lat. 20° 26', 

 Long. 80° 10', where the remains of the mines are still to be seen. 



This paper will be published in full in the Journal, Part II. 



2. On a forgotten Uecord of the occurrence of the Lion in ths 

 District of Palamow and its connection with some other facts regarding 

 the Geographical Distribution of Animals in India. — By V. Ball, 

 M. A., F. G. S. 



I have taken the above title for this paper in consequence of the fact 

 that in the accounts of the distribution of the lion in India by the principal 

 writers on the subject, there is no notice of the following statement 

 which occurs in a work by Surgeon Breton " on the Medico-Topography 

 of the Ceded Provinces of the South- West Frontier" published in the 

 year 1826.* The following is the passage: "A lion in 1814 was shot 

 by the natives near the village of Koondra in Palamow and its skin was 

 seen and recognized by Mr, W. M. Fleming, the then Magistrate of 

 Ramgurh, to be that of a lion." Surgeon Breton adds, " Possibly this 

 may have been a stray animal, for the lion is very little known in South 

 Behar, although the name of Sheerbubbur (lion) is familiar to the more 

 intelligent of the natives." 



It may appear at first sight that such slight evidence as the above 

 is not of much importance, but viewed in connection with other facts 

 regarding the geographical distribution of animals in India, it is of no 

 little interest. 



Mr. W. T. Blanford in a paper published in the Journal for 1867 

 gives a resume of the information of which he was then in possession as 

 to the distribution of the lion in India during the present century. The 

 most eastern locality he mentions is Sheorajpur, twenty-five miles to the 

 west of Allahabad where a lion was killed in 1864, and he records another 

 as having been killed in Rewah in 1866. 



I am inclined to believe in an inherent probability that the lion 

 formerly occurred in Palamow from the fact that I have observed pecu- 

 liarities in the fauna of that sub-division which serve to separate it from 

 the regions surrounding it, and that in fact it should be regarded as an 

 eastern prolongation of the Gangetic province of Blanford. In a paper 

 published in the Proceedings " On the Mammals of the Mahanadi basin" 

 I stated that so far as I then knew, the Indian Gazelle (G. Bennettii) did 



* Govt. Lith. Press, Calcutta, and Transactions of the Medical and Physical 

 Society of Calcutta, Vol. II, P. A. S. B. 1877, p. 168. 



