TENACITY OF LIFE* 
viz,, at earliest morn or at late eve ; at other times the sholas 
must be beaten by men and dogs. 
The colour of the sambur when he is at his best, is a 
very dark brown ; some of them get very fat, and the hinds 
and young stags are fair food for the table. The size varies 
according to age ; a large stag in his ]:)rime will stand fourteen 
hands at the shoulder and weigh over thirty stone. This 
deer is extremely tenacious of life, much more so according to 
my experience, than the red deer of the Highlands of Scot- 
land- I have known them hold on for a long time after 
receiving wounds which would have proved fatal much sooner 
with the latter species. 
Mc Master gives an extract from the journal of the Old 
Forest Ranger, in which he states a case of a stag receiving 
ten i-oz. balls before he fell. Two, which he received at first 
without slackening his speed, passed clean through his body, 
about the centre of his ribs ; after this he ran about a mile, 
and laid up in a wooded ravine to which he was tracked, and 
two more balls hit him, one ball breaking his hind leg and 
another, entering above the rump, passed along the back-bone 
and came out near the shoulder. He was lost for about an 
hour, and when he again broke cover two more balls were 
planted close behind the shoulder, but still he went away 
strong, [n the chase which followed he was hit twice in the 
body and at last brought down by a ball through his neck 
when in the act of leaping a rivulet. He, however, got upon 
his legs again, and stood at bay in the water, and had to have 
another ball in his head to finish him. He further says that 
he could quote a doi;en instances of the extraordinary tenacity 
of life possessed by this animal. 
The antlers of the sambur vary considerably, both in 
