110 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



previously been attacked and wounded. Captain Pearson was 

 once treed by a wounded bull in the Puchmurree hills, which 

 charged and upset his gun-bearer ; and an officer was killed 

 by one some years ago near Aslrgarh. Often the blind rush 

 of an animal bent on escape is put down by excited sportsmen 

 as a deliberate charge. Much, too, of the romance attached to 

 the animal must be attributed to his formidable appearance ; 

 for the sullen air of a mighty bull just roused is very impres- 

 sive ; and much to the wild tales of the people in whose neigh- 

 bourhood they live, who always dilate on their general fero- 

 city, but can seldom point to an instance of its effects, and 

 who are, moreover, frequently from religious prejudice, de- 

 sirous of withholding the sportsman from their pursuit. Still 

 there is sufficient evidence on record of the occasional fierce 

 retaliation of the bull bison when wounded and closely fol- 

 lowed up, in some resulting even in the death of the sports- 

 man, to invest their pursuit with the flavour of danger so 

 attractive to many persons, and to render caution in attacking 

 them highly advisable. The ground on which they are usually 

 met is fortunately favourable for escape if the sportsman be 

 attacked, trees and large rocks being seldom far distant. 



Although a closely-allied bovine, the Gayal of trans-Brah- 

 maputra India, has for ages been domesticated and used to 

 till the land, all attempts to do so with the subject of my 

 remarks, or even to raise them to maturity in a state of 

 captivity, have failed. After a certain point the wild and 

 retiring nature of the forest race asserts itself, and the 

 young bison pines and dies. It has always struck me as 

 curious why the most difficult of all animals to reclaim from 

 a wild state are precisely those whose congeners have been 

 already domesticated. The so-called wild horses, and the 

 wild asses, are almost untamable ; so also with the wild 



