226 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
till dark I stalk along towards camp, and generally time myself to 
arrive in camp just before dark. At Christmas the jungles are pro- 
bably feverish, and camped as one is in the heart of the jungle, 
there is no doubt great danger of catching fever; but I have been 
singularly fortunate in avoiding it. I know no scenery more delight- 
ful than the jungles at the edge of the Satpuras in the neighbourhood 
of the Taptee River. At Christmas time the leaves of the trees show 
the gayest of tints, the grass is not yet dried up, and the whole 
jungle is closely watered with babbling brooks and nullahs of cool 
sparkling water. The climate, too, is delightfully cool except at 
midday. ‘There are always a few tigers, bears, and panthers at this 
time, and although the jungle renders it almost impossible to shoot 
them, still I have had more than one adventure with these animais 
on my stalking trips. To a man fond of wild jungle life, I know of 
no more exhilarating amnsement than a trip of this kind, Full 
accounts of this kind of sport and of this country will be found in 
Forsyth’s ‘‘ Highlands of Central India.” Now for an adventure. 
On the 380th December, 1884, in the early. morning, whilst out 
with Mr. H. M. Slater, of this Society, we came across a fine stag 
sambhur on the edge of the Taptee, half eaten by tigers. The 
ground was soft around, and the marks of a tigress and cubs were 
only too evident. In fact, they had only left the kill on our coming 
up ib was certain, because we heard a sambhur belling at a short 
distance from us, the sure and certain sign of a tiger. Now I must 
leave the sambhur to speak about this tigress. The Taptee at this 
spot was very deep and at least 100 yards wide. We found that the 
tigress had dragged the sambhur up from the river, and the marks 
were very plain. On our next day asking a native close by who 
was tending cattle, he told us the tigress had killed on the other 
side of the river and swam across with the sambhur. We asked 
why the tigress had done this instead of eating on the other side of 
the river, to which he gave a very satisfactory reply, that the bank 
on the other side was bare and very steep, and in order to hide the kill 
from vultures, the tigress had to bring the sambhur across the river, 
the bank being too high and steep for the tiger to drag it up to 
the thick jungle at the top of the bank on the other side. We 
could not go across the river to absolutely verify this statement, but 
we could see with our glasses the marks where the sambhur appeared 
to have been dragged into the river down the steep bank on the other 
side, and there were the undoubted marks of its being dragged out 
