104 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



or eight feet in girth, while most of them, when subse- 

 quently cut down, were found to be almost useless from 

 heart-shake and dry-rot. It belonged to the Thakur of 

 Puchmurree and another chief ; and I soon after concluded 

 a lease of it for Government with them, and laid out a road 

 connecting it with the open country. The view looking 

 upwards to the Puchmurree heights from the Denwa 

 valley, or across from the opposite Motur hiUs, is exceed- 

 ingly fine, the rich reds of the sandstone scarp mellowing 

 into an indescribable variety of delicate shades of purple 

 and violet in the evening sun, while broad belts of shadow 

 thrown across the green slopes at the foot, and gathering 

 in the recesses of the ravines, seem to project the glowing 

 summits of the rocks to an unnatural height in the soft 

 orange-tinted sky. 



Here I ascertained the existence of the Bara-Singha, 

 or twelve-tined deer {Rucervus Duvaucellii), an animal 

 which, like the Sal forest in which it lives, had been sup- 

 posed not to extend to the west of the Sal belt in the 

 Mandla district. I was not so fortunate as to shoot a 

 stag myself in this place ; but I shot two does, and saw 

 a frontlet of the male in the possession of a native shikari, 

 with the immistakable antlers attached. Since then, too, 

 I have heard of a fine stag being shot there by a railway 

 engineer. I believe they are not very numerous here; 

 indeed, the Sal forest, to which I beheve their range is 

 confined, covers an area of only a few square miles. 



I also found that the red jungle-fowl of North-Eastern 

 India (G. ferrugineus) inhabits this Sal forest and the hills 

 around it, although, so far as I am aware, it is not found 

 anywhere else in these hills further west than the great 

 Sal belt of Mandla. The other species of jungle-fowl, 

 which properly belongs to Western and Southern India 

 {G. Sonneratii), is also to be met with on the Puchmurree 

 hiUs ; and I have shot both species in the same day in the 

 ravine where the Mahadeo Cave is situated. The red fowl 

 could hardly be distinguished from many a specimen of 

 the domesticated race either in appearance or voice, while 

 the gray fowl does not crow like a cock, and is, I think, a 

 much handsomer bird than the red. His pecuUar hackles. 



