226 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula where its occurrence is n& 

 mew discovery, for Blyth recorded its existence there in the pape^r 

 already quoted.* The range of the Gaur in Siam, Cochin China- 

 Tonquin, &a, does not appear to have been ascertained* with any cer- 

 tainty ; it is said to occur in Siarn, but I can find no record of its- 

 occurrence further east, and no mention of the existence of any fiat- 



* ml 



horned bovine in South China is made by Swinhoe. 



The Gaur is unknown in the Malay Islands and in Ceylon, but the 

 statement has repeatedly been made that it formerly inhabited the 

 latter. I am disposed to think this doubtful, and I quite agree with 

 Sandersonf in my surprise that the Gaur should have disappeared 

 from a region where wild Elephants are still found in large numbers ■. 

 Throughout the Peninsula of India the reverse is the case ; the 

 Elephant has 7 I think, clearly been the first to disappear, as in the 

 Satpuras, the Northern Syhadri, and throughout parts of Chutia 

 Nagpur, where the Gaur still occurs. A belief in the former occur- 

 rence of Bos gaurus in Ceylon is partly founded on the fact that 

 Knox, writing in 1681, mentioned under the name of Gnavera, an 

 animal kept tame at Kandy, and partly on Kelaart's statement^ 

 that " the Kandyans also say that the Goura once roamed through 

 those forests which to the present day are called after the Goura — 

 Goure-Ellia, Goura-Koodie, &c." On the other hand, it is by no 

 means improbable that the Gaur, like the Tiger, never inhabited 

 Ceylon, a circumstance very possibly due to the animal not having 

 migrated into Southern India until after Ceylon had been separated 

 by sea. 



Bos sondaicus. — The Banteng is entirely confined to countries east 

 of the Bay of Bengal. The northermost localities from which it 

 has been distinctly recorded are Northern Pegu and Arrakan west 

 of Pegu; but Blyth has Shown (J. A. S. B., XXIX., p. 294) that it 

 probably occurs in the ranges east of Chittagong. It is common in 



Tenasserim, and is probably found in Siam, the Malay Peninsula, - 



, 



* Cantor too, in 1846, stated that the Gaur was " numeroos in the Malayan 

 Peninsula." (J. A. S. B., xv, p. 273). 



f ' Thirteen years among the Wild Beasts of India,' p. 243. 



X Prodromus Faun. Zeyl., p. 87. In Griffith's ' Cuvier, v., p. 410, too, it is stated 

 that the wild ox or Guavera of Ceylon was shot by British parties daring the war 

 with Kandy. But the animals shot may have been Wild Buffaloes, 



