Game Animals of India, etc. 



of the upper-parts, with the exception of the forehead, 

 which is frequently tawny, being in both sexes blackish 

 brown ; the legs, from above the knees and hocks 

 downwards, showing the usual white or yellowish 

 " stockings." Parti-coloured, or even wholly white, 

 gayal are stated to be by no means uncommon. 



Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker of Kachar, who studied the 

 two animals for upwards of thirteen years, has written 

 as follows concerning the relationship between the gaur 

 and the gayal in the Asian newspaper of February 20 

 and 27, 1900. "During the first two or three years 

 of this period," he observes, " 1 held the opinion that 

 they were identical. After this I veered round a good 

 deal, and began to think that the reasons for considering 

 them distinct might be right ; this because I quite 

 failed to obtain certain necessary links between the two 

 forms. The last two or three years, however, have 

 produced specimens which have shown every one of 

 these same links, and 1 am now forced to the conclusion 

 that there is no difference of specific value between the 

 two animals, such differences as do exist being princi- 

 pally, if not entirely, the result of domestication." 



Although several of the gaur skulls figured in Mr. 

 Baker's article are those of immature animals, yet they 

 show evidence of a transition between the typical forms 

 of the two animals ; this evidence being strongly supple- 

 mented by the Malay form of the gaur described above. 



Such a transition does not, however, by any means 

 invalidate the points given above as characteristic of the 

 two animals — such features being those of their typical 

 representatives. It may be added that, so far as the 

 present writer's knowledge goes, it is only in the 

 Kachar and Assam districts and Malaya that skulls 

 intermediate between the typical gaur and the typical 

 gayal are met with ; the Madras gaur preserving, 

 when fully adult, the distinctive peculiarities of that 

 animal in all cases. 



There is no evidence that the gayal exists in a truly 



66 



