190 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL JJLSTORY SOCIETY, Vol. Nil. 



throat. This seems extraordinary when mturalistH have mostly described 

 the gaur as having little or no dewlap. Dewlap originally meant the loose 

 fold descending from the chest, which, when the animal was grazing, swept 

 the dew: thus, in 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' hounds are described as 'dew- 

 lapped, like Thessalian bulls'; but in the humped Indian cattle the fold 

 extends from the throat downwards, and in the Mysore draught bullocks and 

 in the Brahmini bulls is enormous, whilst in the ordinary village cattle the 

 development is small." 



The following notes on the gaur will be interesting to most readers. Mr. 

 A. F. Martin, of Travancore. writes : — 



" When the Kaunan Devan hills in North Travancore were opened out for 

 tea and cinchona some years ago, the felling of the tea forest restricted the 

 wild beasts, particularly the elephants and bison, when passing across the 

 estate, to one or two pathways. One particular track was however left to 

 them for about ten years, when further cultivation led at last to the blocking 

 up of even this right of way. The animals were at first much puzzled, and 

 both elephants and gaur took to wandering about the cultivation. The 

 elephants accommodated themselves to the altered conditions and used the 

 estate paths. The gaur, more suspicious, took a straight line for their 

 grazing-grounds over the rotten felled timber and through the older cinchona 

 plantations, but were often brought up by the sight of whitewashed walls 

 surmounted by a corrugated iron roof. 



" At last they settled down to a pathway between the old cinchona and 

 natural belt left between it and the new clearing, 



" A pit 10 ft. long, 8 ft. wide and 8 ft. deep was dug on the boundary, 

 covered with a mat made of reeds and bamboos, over which earth and dry 

 leaves were scattered. The smell of the fresh earth however turned them 

 off. Once a gaur got his lore feet down the side of the pit, but made a 

 bold jump and cleared it. 



"After some months the tracks of a large herd were found making for the 

 pit, and it turned out that a gaur had fallen in but managed to jump clean 

 out again. It was evident that 8 ft. was not deep enough, and rock in the 

 bottom prevented its being sunk deeper. Another pit was therefore dug 

 some distance away on the same boundary. The ground was on the side of a 

 steep hill, so that whilst the lower wall was 10 ft, the upper was 14 ft. deep. 



" After a while a cow-gaur fell in, but whilst Mr. Martin was watching her 

 and waiting for coolies to help in putting logs across the pit she managed 

 to scramble out, ;ind although she followed the path to the old pit, she 

 avoided it and escaped. Two days afterwards a bull fell in and was secured, 

 Mr. Martin describes the trouble they had with this huge animal. Getting 

 logs across the top of the pit, with the gaur charging madly about, was 

 exciting work, and the feat was successfully accomplished only after the 

 utmost difticultv and dau'jer. 



