336 On the Mammalia of Nepal. [Aug. 



generated by the undue and almost exclusive prevalence of vegetable 

 exbalations in the atmosphere. There is no free ventilation ; and the 

 forest and the lesser hills (where the malaria is worst) are absolute 

 wildernesses of rank vegetation, of so extravagantly rife an increase that 

 in Oriental phrase, you may almost see and hear it grow ! 



Yet, it is worthy of remark, that in this pest-house, from which 

 all mankind flee, during 8 months of every 12, constantly reside 

 and are bred* some of the mightiest quadrupeds in the world. The 

 royal tiger, the panther, the leopard, the elephant, the arna or wild 

 buffalo, the rhinoceros, and stags of the noblest growth, abound : 

 and, what to our fancies is less singular, the same malarious region 

 cherishes Boa constrictors of the largest size, and other huge creatures 

 of their kind. 



The like is notoriously the case elsewhere : yet still we may rea- 

 sonably insist on the fact, and ask what is it in the constitution of these 

 large quadrupeds, (I omit the serpents in the argument,) carnivorous 

 and herbivorous, which enables them to breathe healthfully the air 

 that is death to man. Take tame animals of their very kinds suddenly 

 into this region between April and October, and, like man, almost, 

 they will catch the malaria and die. On the other hand, there are 

 particular tribes of men bred in these or similar places, (such as the 

 Tharuofthe spot and theDhangar of South Behar,) who can live there, 

 at least, if not flourish. They die not ; neither do they pine visibly ; 



* A friend, who is looking over my shoulder as I write, suggests to me, that 

 Bishop Heber has observed in his Journal, that the malarious tract is entirely 

 abandoned by wild animals, as well as by man and his flocks and herds, in the 

 unhealthy season. 



The Bishop probably was unaware that the malaria is not confined to the TaraT, 

 properly so called, but rages thoughout the saul forest and the lesser hills, up to an 

 elevation of some 3000 feet on the mountains : and that the wild animals, which 

 are driven, by fire, out of the more open parts of the Tarai at the close of the cold 

 weather, and cannot return till the rains have restored to them the shelter of a 

 rank vegetation, retire during this interval to the covert of the forest and lesser 

 hills. 



If the elephants, rhinoceroses, wild buffaloes, and tigers, were to quit the 

 malarious tract altogether, they must either ascend the huge mountains of the 

 central region of Nepal, or, issue out into the plains of Hindustan : either of which 

 suppositions is extravagant enough, one would think, to refute itself, were they not 

 both of them, as they are unquestionably, refuted by notorious facts — such as the 

 extraordinary depradations committed upon the crops of the Tarai by wild ele- 

 phants and buffaloes issuing out of the forest at the height of the malarious sea- 

 son — the circumstance of European gentlemen seeking the tiger in his lair, on 

 the confines of the forest, in March and April, at the hazard of their lives, because 

 he is to be found no where else, &c. &c. 



