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I might further extend this enumeration, by including the Cheela eagle of Ceylon, which, although I have placed it in my list as identical with the Hematornis cheela of the Dekkan, is, I have since been assured, a different bird, and is most probably the Falco bido of Horsfield, known to us by specimens obtained from Java and Sumatra.
I was led to question the soundness of this dictum; and from a closer examination of its geological conformation and of its botanical and zoological characteristics I came to the conclusion that not only is there an absence of sameness between the formations of the two localities; but that plants and animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects exist in Ceylon, which are not to be found in the flora and fauna of the Dekkan; but which present a striking affinity, and occasionally an actual identity, with those of the Malayan countries and some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago.
The marsh and jungle swarmed with peacocks, jungle-fowl, and wild-fowl of all sorts, affording glorious sport; and, besides the smaller kinds of deer, several specimens occurred of a magnificent species of stag with twelve-tyned horns, called baru-singa apparently allied to the sambur and rusa of the Dekkan.
Red Hunters all: grown dogs of their Pack, heavy and strong for all that they eat lizards in the Dekkan." What Won-tolla had said meant that the dhole, the red hunting-dog of the Dekkan, was moving to kill, and the Pack knew well that even the tiger will surrender a new kill to the dhole. They drive straight through the Jungle, and what they meet they pull down and tear to pieces.
"The dhole, the dhole of the Dekkan Red Dog, the Killer! They came north from the south saying the Dekkan was empty and killing out by the way. When this moon was new there were four to me my mate and three cubs. She would teach them to kill on the grass plains, hiding to drive the buck, as we do who are of the open. At midnight I heard them together, full tongue on the trail.
He does not change his clothes, as we do in Europe, but takes off the few things he wore during the day. He bathes by the family well and loosens his hair, of which, if he is a Mahratti or an inhabitant of the Dekkan, he has only one long lock at the top of his shaven head. To cover the body and the head whilst eating would be sinful.
The peninsula of the Dekkan might then be conjectured to have been nearly or wholly separated from the central part of Hindustan, and confined to the range of mountains along the eastern coast; the insect-fauna of which is as yet almost unknown, but will probably be found to have more resemblance to that of Ceylon than to the insects of northern and western India just as the insect-fauna of Malaya appears more to resemble the similar productions of Australasia than those of the more northern continent.
Having assumed the dress of women, they entered ogling and smiling, and so well imitated the mummers in playing on the mundal, dancing, and mimicry, that the roy's son was charmed with their performances. At length they each drew a dagger, and, like the dancers of Dekkan, continued to flourish them for some time, making a thousand antic postures in advancing, retreating, and turning round.
The Dekkan colossus dropped his eyes and remained silent. "You have guessed rightly," absently answered Mr. Y , busy over his drawing apparatus. "Narayan sees in you something like his late deity Shiva; something just a little less than Parabrahm. Would you believe it?
Our men are tigers, each one, but the red dogs of the Dekkan can pull down the tiger, for they are many, and he alone." Then that great Lady, accepting his words, and conscious of the danger, murmured this, clinging to her husband: "There was a Princess of our line whose beauty made all other women seem as waning moons in the sun's splendour.
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