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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.

It is fully as large as our own stag; and is further distinguished by long hair growing upon the upper part of its neck, cheeks, and throat, which gives it the appearance of having a beard and mane! It inhabits Bengal, and some of the large Indian islands. The Samboo, or Sambur, is another large species, not unlike the rusa.

In Sumatra and Borneo we have a distinct species of Sambur Deer; in Timor a smaller one; a third exists in Java; and a fourth in the Philippines. In Java, too, we find the beautiful little Muntjak; and another tiny variety in China, called the Chinese Muntjak.

He had of course tackled his adversary, and indulged his propensity for a stand-up fight, with results which we never could discover; probably the leopard had been glad to retire honourably from the uncertain conflict. This grand dog was ultimately killed in a fight with an immense boar, and his name will reappear in connection with the sambur deer, misnamed the "elk," throughout Ceylon.

They filled caps, sacks, bamboo joints, and every receptacle which they could find after each man had drunk all he could possibly force down his throat and had eaten the huge clots which choked the thorax. When the sambur was brought to camp a regular orgy was held by our servants, mafus, and dozens of villagers who gathered to buy, beg, or steal some of the blood.

That irregularity in the process would not be without analogy, is shown by the case of the Indian sambur deer, of which there is evidence from such authority as that king of sportsmen, Sir Samuel Baker, and others, that the shedding does not always occur at the same season, nor is it always annual in the same buck; and by Pore David's deer, which has been known to shed twice in one year.

But the hordes of the sambur were behind, pressing the tribe onwards, and straight ahead was the wooded hill, dense with foliage, luring with its promise of safe and convenient shelter.

And the screaming, trumpeting monsters, hardly aware that there had been an obstacle in their path, arrived at the edge of the canal. Here and there an old bull, leading, took alarm, trumpeted wildly, and strove to stop. But the belt of pitch was full to the brink with the packed bodies of the sambur, and did not look to be a very serious barrier to the spacious brown levels beyond it.

On one of our hunts my wife and I discovered a water hole in the midst of a dense jungle where the mud was trodden hard by sambur, muntjac, wild boar, and other animals. We decided to spend a night watching beside it, but the "Dying Rabbit" who was enthusiastic in the day time lost his courage as the sunlight waned. Very doubtfully he consented to go.

A large hide of the sambur deer, well cured and greased so as to be soft and pliable, should, invariably protect the belly of the elephant, and the flanks under the fore legs, from the friction of the girthing rope. The breastplate and crupper also require attention.