492 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
cows fled, but his buffalos, hearing his cries, rushed up and saved 
him. 
The attachment evinced by these uncouth creatures to their keepers 
was once strongly brought to my notice in the Mutiny. In beating up 
the broken forces of a rebel Thakoor, whom we had defeated the 
previous day, I, with a few troopers, ran some of them to bay in a 
rocky ravine. Amongst them was a Brahmin who had a buffalo cow. 
This creature followed her master, who was with us as a prisoner, for 
the whole day, keeping at a distance from the troops, but within call of 
her owner’s voice. When we made a short halt in the afternoon, the 
man offered to give us some milk ; she came to his call at once, and we 
had a grateful draught, the more welcome as we had had nothing to eat 
since the previous night. That buffalo saved her master’s life, for when 
in the evening the prisoners were brought up to court martial and 
sentenced to be hanged, extenuating circumstances were urged for our 
friend with the buffalo, and he was allowed to go, as I could testify he 
had not been found with arms in his hands; and I had the greatest 
pleasure in telling him to be off, and have nothing more to do with 
rebel ‘Thakoors. Jerdon says the milk of the buffalo is richer than that 
of the cow. I doubt this. I know that in rearing wild animals 
buffalos’ milk is better than cows’ milk, which is far too rich, and re- 
quires plentiful dilution with water. 
There is a very curious little animal allied to the buffalo, of which we 
have, or have had, a specimen in the Zoological Gardens at Alipore— 
the Anoa depressicornis ; it comes from the Island of Celebes, and seems 
to link the buffalo with the deer. It is black, with short wavy hair. 
Before passing on to the true Cervidze I must here place an animal 
commonly called a deer, and generally classed as such—the musk-deer 
according to some naturalists. 
There is no reason, save an 
insufficient one, that this 
creature should be so called 
and classed, there being much 
evidence in favour of its al- 
liance to the antelopes. In 
the first place it has a gall 
bladder, which the Cervidze 
have not, with the exception, 
? according to Dr. Crisp, of 
Skull of Musk Deer. the axis (‘P. Z. S.’). On the 
other hand it has _ large 
canine tusks like the muntjacs, deerlets, and water-deer, and, as 
these are all aberrant forms of the true Cervidze, there is no reason why 
a 
