680 WANDERINGS OF THE WATER BUFFALO. 



onto a buffalo in a wallowing-hole and frightens it out may be excused 

 for imagining that he has just come on a mud volcano at the moment 

 of eruption. 



This is the real buffalo — called in India the arnee — and not to be 

 confounded with the gaur or the banteng, the wild oxen of India and 

 the Far East. It will be seen that the buffalo in its wild state is limited 

 to a not very large area, namely, the country south of the Himalayas. 

 and extending- for some distance, the limits of which are not perfectly 

 known, in the territory of the Indo-Chinese states. Yet this enor- 

 mously powerful and fierce animal has been so completely domesticated 

 by the Hindoos that the tame herds are regularly driven out to feed in 

 the same jungles in which wild buffaloes live, the bulls among which 

 will often come down and, after giving battle to the tame bulls, annex 

 the cows for a time and keep them in the jungle. The only striking 

 difference in appearance between the tame and wild buffalo is that the 

 horns of the former do not grow to the size attained in the wild speci- 

 mens, and alter their curve and pitch. Mr. Lockwood Kipling notes 

 the curious effect of the grove of long horns above a herd of these 

 animals, no two buffaloes having them of the same pattern. Traces of 

 the lateness of the date of their apprenticeship to the service of man 

 are seen in their power of self-defense and combination when threat- 

 ened with attack by tigers or leopards, by their mating with the wild 

 stock, and by the uncertainty of their temper, especially toward 

 Europeans. Wherever they are used by oriental races these outbreaks 

 of savageness are always in evidence from time to time when the white 

 man encounters them. In China they have been known to chase Euro- 

 peans when the latter were riding, as well as when passing on foot. 

 They will do the same in India, in Egypt, and in Burmah. Yet in 

 India they are generally taken out to pasture by some small boy, who 

 is their tyrant and master, and will protect him, their calves, and 

 themselves from the tiger. An account appeared recently in Country 

 Life of the use of a herd of these animals to beat the jung -1 e for a 

 wounded tiger which had killed a native. The buffaloes were driven 

 up and down for a whole day. beating the ground in a compact body, 

 until they found the tiger, whose hiding place was shown by the 

 excitement of the herd, at which it charged almost as soon as they 

 observed it. and was shot by the guns following them. 



As a beast of draft the buffalo has astonishing powers of hauling 

 heavy traffic over bad roads. It can plow in mud over its hocks. 

 It is most docile. It can swim a river going to and from work, tow 

 barges along canals and streams, sometimes walking in the shallow 

 water by the banks, like the horses did on the Lower Thames before 

 the towpath was made. It will eat anything it can get, and asks only 

 for one indulgence, a good hour's swim or mud bath in the middle of 

 the day. The rice fields which feed so great a percentage of the popu- 



