e many
different species and varieties of the sambur. Zoologists usually class
them in a group called _Rusa_; and one or other of this group may be
found in every district of India from Ceylon to the Himalayas, and from
the Indus to the islands of the Indian Archipelago. They haunt in
timber, and usually by the banks of streams or other waters.

America has long been regarded as the favourite region of the deer
tribe, as Africa is the true home of the antelopes. This belief,
however, seems to be rather an incorrect one, and has arisen, perhaps,
from the fact that the American species are better known to Europeans.
It is true that the largest of the deer--the moose (_Cervus alces_)--is
an inhabitant of the American continent in common with Northern Europe
and Asia; but the number of species on that continent, both in its
northern and southern divisions, is very limited. When the zoology of
the East--I mean of all those countries and islands usually included
under the term East Indies--shall have been fully determined, we shall
no doubt find not only twice, but three times the number of species of
deer that belongs to America.

When we consider the vast number of educated Englishmen--both in the
array and in the civil service--who have idled away their lives in
India, we cannot help wondering at the little that is yet known in
relation to the _fauna_ of the Oriental world. Most of the Indian
officers have looked upon the wild animals of that country with the eye
of the sportsman rather than of the naturalist. With them a deer is a
deer, and a large ox-like animal a buffalo, or it may be a gayal, or a
jungle cow, or a gour, or a gyall; but which of all these is an ox, or
whether the four last-mentioned bovine quadrupeds are one and the same
species, remains to be determined. Were it not that these gentlemen
have had spirit enough occasionally to send us home a skin or a set of
horns, we might remain altogether ignorant of the existence of the
creature from which these trophies were taken. Verily science owes not
much to the Honourable East India Company. We are not blind to such
noble exceptions as Sykes, Hodgson, and others; and, if every province
of India had a resident of their character, a fauna might soon be
catalogued that would astonish even the spectacled _savant_.

CHAPTER NINE.

A NIGHT MARAUDER.

Ossaroo soon stripped the stag of its skin, cut the carcass into
quarters, and hung them on the li