INTRODUCTORY 23 



the area of the great Sal belt, but do not occur to the 

 west of it, excepting in the Sal fatch of the D&nwd valley, 

 where the two latter, though not the buffalo, again recur. 

 In the Denwa valley there is but a solitary herd of the 

 swamp deer, I beheve; the red jungle-fowl are not so 

 numerous as the rival species, G. Sonneratii, which replaces 

 it in the west and south of India ; and it is not surprising 

 that the wild bufEalo should have disappeared when his 

 range had been reduced, by the clearance of the inter- 

 mediate forest, to the narrow limits of this small valley. 

 So large and prominent an animal requires a much larger 

 range than deer and birds; and there is no part of the 

 surrounding country suitable for his habits until we reach 

 the Sal tracts again, though very probably the extensive 

 black soil plains of the Narbada valley were so before 

 they were cleared. In corroboration of the probability 

 of his formerly having extended further down the valley 

 than at present, skulls and horns have been found in the 

 upper gravels of the Narbada in no way differing, except 

 in superior size, from those of the existing species. Their 

 greater size is not surprising, as they are not larger than 

 the horns still occasionally met with in Assam, where also 

 the average size is now rapidly diminishing rmder the 

 attacks of sportsmen. 



Two other large representatives of the eastern and 

 western faunas, the wild elephant and the Asiatic lion, 

 also appear to have formerly extended far into this region. 

 In modern times, however, the advance of cultivation 

 and the persecutions of the hunter have driven them both 

 almost out of the country I am describing. The former, 

 in the time of .Akber (as is ascertained from Abul Fuzl's 

 chronicles), ranged as far west as Asirgarh, but is now 

 confined to the extreme east of the province. Sir Thomas 

 Roe, ambassador from James I. to the Court of the Great 

 Mogul, in the seventeenth century, speaks of the lion as 

 being then common in the Narbada valley. It is now 

 seldom heard of further east than Rajputana; although 

 a solitary specimen sometimes appears in their old haunts 

 further east. A lion was killed in the Sagar district in 

 1851, and another a few years ago only a few miles from 



