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Show 1867.] LIEUT. R. C. BEAV AN ON THE PANOLIA DEER. 761 a few scattered females and young of the second year, yet the insight thus afforded into their habits and economy more than repaid me for the severe attack of illness I subsequently incurred by exposure to the heat and wet. This plain of Yengyaing was then, owing to recent and heavy falls of rain, one large swamp. Nearly the whole of its unbroken extent, which embraces an area of fourteen miles in length with an average breadth of ten, could be traversed in a small canoe, except here and there where mud and vegetation combined obliged one to resort to a very unpleasant system of half wading in water and half sticking in deep slime. A continuation of this plain, broken here and there by belts of jungle, extends for several hundred miles up the Burmese coast, and has evidently been formed by the gradual retirement of the sea, which at one time doubtless dashed its waves against the Martaban and other continuous ranges of laterite hills. It is now, at Yengyaing, some eight to ten miles distant from the hills, and seems to be still retiring, since the water along the coasts of the Gulf of Martaban is very shallow, and studded here and there with sandbanks. For the primary cause of this we may doubtless look to the immense amount of silt brought down by the waters of the Salween, Beeling, Sittang, and Rangoon rivers, all of which discharge themselves into the Gulf of Martaban. As the sea retires, a belt of mangrove-jungle, about a mile in width, appears to travel with it, and the plain is thus enclosed by a barrier of vegetation on one side and the mountains on the other. This strip of mangrove- jungle gives cover to numberless Hog-deer, Tigers, Leopards, and Pigs, but is never entered by the Thamyn, except where somewhat open; nor on the other side do they ever attempt to penetrate into the mountains. The plain is intersected by numerous tidal creeks, which, in the hot weather, when deprived of water from the hills, appear to dry up to a great extent; and those still open at that time of year contain no admixture of fresh water, so that it is evident that for two, if not three, months in the year the Thamyn must be entirely deprived of fresh water*; whilst during the rainy season, for six months at least, they may be said to live in water. It appears wonderful how they can manage to exist in such extremes of heat and wet. With the exception of a few stunted trees here and there, and a fringe of Hibiscus bushes along the creeks, the plain is covered with nothing but grasses and paddy, of which latter both the wild and cultivated varieties are abundant. Owing to the paucity of the population and the consequent demand for labour in this immediate neighbourhood, perhaps only one-fourth of the whole area is under cultivation for paddy; the crop succeeds here admirably, and the grain forms one of the staple articles of export from Moulmein and other Burmese ports. The remaining three-fourths is covered with the indigenous uncultivated plant, which in seasons of scarcity is reaped and used for food. This forms a vast grazing-ground both for the Thamyn and * The Burmese assert that during this period the animal drinks urine ! PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1867, No. XLIX. |
