Manipur Banting 43 



head, although in some instances as many as twenty, or even more, may be 

 seen in company. Each herd is led by an old bull, but the band may 

 include two or three younger animals of the same sex. When the 

 bulls advance in age, they are frequently expelled from the herd by their 

 younger and more powerful rivals, and are then compelled to live in 

 solitude. As a rule, they avoid the neighbourhood of villages and exposed 

 cultivated land, although in secluded jungle clearings they may inflict con- 

 siderable damage on crops. Their food includes grass, leaves, and fallen 

 fruit, young bamboo-shoots being a very favourite nutriment. Although 

 in cloudy weather they continue till a later hour, their usual feeding-time 

 is from early morning till nine or ten o'clock, after which they retire to 

 the shade for repose. Pasturage and other kinds of food appear to be the 

 inducements for considerable local migrations on the part of these animals, 

 the young shoots of the bamboo attracting them to the jungle during the 

 early part of the rainy season. But at this time they are also often driven 

 into the open by the persecution of flies and mosquitoes. During the hot 

 season they seek the deep shade of the dense jungle, but at other seasons of 

 the year prefer thinner and more open covert. Occasionally they visit the 

 lower hills, but never seem to ascend to any great elevation, being thus 

 very unlike the gaur. Except when wounded, tsaing seem indisposed to 

 charge the hunter ; the herds dashing off at a rapid pace when first dis- 

 turbed, but soon settling down again. Solitary bulls do not appear more 

 vicious in disposition than those with the herds. 



c. Manipur Race — Bos sondaicus, var. 



Characters. — Smaller than the preceding race, the height of the adult 

 male being 5 feet at the shoulder, and distinguished by the red colour of 

 this sex at all ages and the absence of a white patch on the buttocks, which 

 is, however, developed in the female. Male with the ears relatively 



