B O S. 



it is said to he in the country places near that river 

 where the greater number of them are found) are 

 represented as being nearly as heavy as those in the 

 eastern jungles, though lower. They are said to be 

 nearly of the same colour, only the hair is shorter, 

 and the skin not so white. They are further repre- 

 sented as being much more gregarious, and as 

 appearing in herds of several hundreds, both on these 

 marshy pastures, and when they are floating in the 

 river. That they should be more gregarious in pro- 

 portion as their pastures arc wider, and there is less 

 cover for the few enemies which they have cause to 

 dread, is readily to be supposed. One animal may 

 make its way through the jungle, but the passage of a. 

 herd of animals as large as the buil'aloes would be 

 rather a difficult matter. We find that, in the case of 

 the antelopes, those which live in the forests are far 

 more solitary than those which frequent more open 

 place?, and they arc also far more bold and resolute. 



The history of the wild buffaloes of India, like thai 

 of the wild oxen, wild dogs, and many other wild 

 animals of the same country, is far from satisfactory ; 

 and it is of such a nature that the most careful 

 inquiry which can now be made can hardly be ex- 

 pected to clear it up ; and we never can enter safely 

 upon the history of any one of its races, unless we 

 keep the cause of those difficulties constantly in our 

 view. India is not only a land of very violent 

 natural action, as is proved by the facts, that much of 

 it is worn to the granite, that some of the rivers flow 

 through deep channels, even in the solid rock, for 

 hundreds of miles ; and that the lower parts of the 

 valleys of others continue, for hundreds of miles in 

 length, deposits of matter, evidently brought there by 

 the waters, extending to the depth of several hundred 

 fet. It is no exaggeration to say that the Ganges 

 alone has, in the course of time, and without any 

 other action than the common one of the seasons, 

 washed down more matter than there is in all the 

 British islands above the level of the sea; and while 

 the Ganges lias been doing this, the other rivers and 

 means of change have not been idle. Land and 

 water must thus often not only have changed places 

 with each other, but have alternated on the same 

 place many times over, and soil, with its plants and 

 its animals, must have again and again been formed 

 and swept away. Thus we may see in India, upon a 

 tolerably large scale, changes and revolutions in the 

 earth, and its productions and inhabitants, similar to 

 those which, in countries where the common action 

 of the elements is tar milder, we can imagine to have 

 been brought about only by some grand convulsion 

 of nature. For, in India, they appear to have taken 

 place without the agency of either earthquake or 

 volcano. 



Nor, if we compare the feebleness of man's resist- 

 ance with what can be done by natural causes in 

 such a climate, situated between the gigantic Hima- 

 laya on the one hand, and the ocean which stretches 

 uninterrupted from Cape Comorin to the Antarctic 

 on the other, can we consider that the changes 

 produced by human means have been less in propor- 

 tion. For nearly three thousand years, according to 

 tolerably well authenticated history, or for four thou- 

 sand years, if we are to believe the really not impro- 

 bable history of the war of Mahabharat, India has 

 been a prey to the sword of every conqueror, so that 

 there is perhaps not a spot within it, even that 

 pestilent barrier at the fool of the Himalaya, which 



sa>s imperatively to man, " thou sha't not dwell here,' 

 which has not felt fifty alternations of fertile fields 

 and lonely villages, with houseless jungles, in which 

 not one memorial of man or his works remained. 

 Those alternations take place with wonderful rapidity 

 in India; ami in the memory of many now living, 

 much of the country immediately to the south of the 

 Nerbndda, has been thickly inhabited and well culti- 

 vated, tenaiitiess, and overrun by the productions of 

 wild nature, and thickh inhabited and well cultivated 

 again. In such a country, it were vain to speak 

 \\ith too much obstinacy <-v' original races of animals, 

 more especially if at ail analogous to those which 

 man has at any time had in a state of domestication. 

 Nor can we confidently assert th:it such an animal asthe 

 Arnee may not be the remnant of a race once domes- 

 ticated which took shelter in the jungles, in the same 

 manner as many of the peculiar tribes of men that are 

 found in the fastnesses of those forests and mountains 

 are understood to be. This is a very necessary 

 caution in the natural history of India, and we have 

 availed ourselves of what appears to us the fittest 

 opportunity of putting those readers who are not 

 conversant with such matters in possession of it. 



The domesticated buffalo of India has been pretty 

 generally distributed over the south-western part of 

 Asia, Europe as far as the Alps, and Africa to the 

 northward of the desert. It is a large animal of 

 nearly the same character and si/e us the average of 

 the wild varieties, being about six feet and a half high 

 at the shoulders, and eight and a half in length, but 

 the size varies with the climate and treatment. The 

 horns are not so much developed as in the wild ones ; 

 they are less triangular in their section, being rather 

 rounded on the posterior side, though they ha\: 

 angular ridge in front. The skin in this variety is 

 dark coloured, and the hair short, like that of the 

 wild ones on the plains by the Ganges ; but it is said 

 that those which have been domesticated to the east- 

 ward of the mountains which separate India from the 

 countries sloping toward the eastern sea more 

 resemble the pale skinned ones of the eastern jungles. 

 When we say that the skin is white or dark, it must 

 be understood of the epidermis only ; because the 

 hair is of nearly the same colour in all, and therefore 

 we must suppose that so also is the true colouring 

 matter of the skin, which is generally understood to 

 be lodged in the mucous tissue, between the epi- 

 dermis and the true skin, which last is muscular, and 

 contains vessels. All therefore that we can infer 

 from the lighter epidermis of tl^ese animals in the 

 thick jungle, and the darker one in the exposed plain, 

 is that this particular portion of the covering is in 

 them peculiarly susceptible to the action of the sun 

 and atmosphere ; that this pale colour takes place 

 something in the same way as it does in vegetables 

 when they are etiolated, or blanched ; and the deep 

 colour comes on in the exposure, just as vegetables 

 become green in the leaves when they are exposed 

 to a moderate degree of light and heat, and are apt to 

 turn to a more intense tint, such as red or purple, 

 when they are more exposed and not killed l> 

 exposure. The same consideration would lead us 10 

 suppose that the general development of the animal 

 is diminished by the same causes which darken the 

 epidermis, as not only the horns which, as more im- 

 mediately connected with that integument, and as we 

 may say, growing out of it, are smaller in those 

 varieties which are dark, but that the general dimen- 



