318 Mr Breton 07i the Topography^ Animals^ ^c. 



Singlibhoom and Siimbhulpore there is a forest of these trees 

 extending uninterruptedly for thirty or forty miles. Mr Breton 

 mentions a number of other trees known to the residents, but 

 states tliat in these almost impenetrable forests are many trees 

 and plants unknown to Europeans. 



Of the wild animals which inhabit the mountains and wood- 

 ed parts of these provinces, the Gaour or gigantic ox is one of 

 the most important. Though occasionally seen by residents in 

 a wild state, the habits and structure of this animal are scarcely 

 known. A notice in the 9th volume of the Memoires du Mus. 

 d^Hist. Nat. extracted from an English account of an Indian 

 hunting match, and occasional allusions in the Journals of 

 English travellers, form the scanty history of this magnifi- 

 cent animal. Major Charles Hamilton Smith, an excellent 

 zoologist, and author of the supplementary account of the 

 order Rumifiantia in Griffith's translation oHhe Regne Animal, 

 places the Gaour in his Bisontine group under the name of Bos 

 Gaurus, and details the characters as given in these incidental 

 notices. The chief of these characters, and which distinguishes 

 the Gaour from all other animals of the tribe, is said to be an 

 elevated spinous ridge, extending in the form of an arch from 

 the end of the cervical vertebrae to half way down the dorsal 

 vertebras. The existence of this spinous projection, though 

 doubted by Major Smith, is particularly noticed in the account 

 of Mr Breton, who personally examined a specimen. From 

 the measurements of the animal recorded in the French me- 

 moirs, however, and copied by the Major, being identically 

 the same as those now printed in Mr Breton's paper, and from 

 the specimen examined by that gentleman being seen so far 

 back as 1816, it is not improbable that the measurements and 

 the character of the spinous ridge rest on this single observa^ 

 tion, communicated through some other channel to Europe. 

 Though no doubt, therefore, is to be entertained of the fact, 

 when detailed by an observer so capable, still it would be de- 

 sirable that the nature of this anomalous structure were ex- 

 ,amined by the anatomists of Europe, and for this purpose, 

 that specimens should be sent to our national museums. In 

 the meantime, as all our knowledge of the animal seems to be 



