26 TWO TEAES IN THE JUNGLE. 



bluish-black, and almost haii-less india-rubber-like skin ; the hip- 

 bones stand up high and sharp like obelisks, and the feet are huge, 

 clumsy, and wide-spreading. The buffalo loves mud and moist 

 ground, and nature has provided these broad splay feet to prevent 

 the animal from sinking too deeply in the mire. He carries his 

 head precisely like a camel, low down, with nose thrust far for- 

 wai'd ; and his horns, which join his skull exactly on a level with 

 his eye, sweep downward and backward as they diverge, until they 

 reach back to the shoulders and beyond. The horns are broad, 

 flat, wrinkled, and jet black, and to look at the whole head one 

 would say that the beast was created with especial reference to 

 running rapidly through very thick brush. This animal so inter- 

 ested me that I went to the market at four o'clock in the morning, 

 just when the butcher-train came in from Bandora, bought five 

 large heads, and after breakfast. Carlo and I cleaned them with our 

 knives in the back-yard of the hotel. Two of them afterward went 

 to English museums — like coals carried to Newcastle. 



I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the Victoria Gar- 

 dens, expecting to find there a collection illustrating the fauna of 

 the Bombay Presidency, from which I could learn where to go or 

 send for certain animals which I desired to obtain. The Museum 

 consists of a very fine building containing an admirable statue of 

 the Prince Consort and another of the Queen, two stuffed animals, 

 half a dozen skulls, some minerals and seeds, and that is about all. 

 The Museum seems to have been built for the statues, rather than 

 the statues for the Museum. I had been joyfully anticipating the 

 sight of the splendid tigers I would find there in various shapes, 

 but I was not prepai-ed for the sight which really awaited me. It 

 was a huge tiger made of papier-mache and gorgeously painted, in 

 the act of rending a native to death. The man lay under the tiger 

 holding a long knife in the brute's stomach, perfectly unconcerned, 

 while his eyes were fixed upon the visitor with a reaUy jolly "what 

 do-you-think-of-that ? " expression. 



Why Bombay, the largest city in India, should take so much less 

 interest in scientific matters than cities in the other Presidencies, 

 I do not know, unless it is that she is wholly absorbed in cotton. 

 It is certainly a poor place for a naturalist, and all the time I felt 

 lonesome and out of place. 



At the hotel I met one day an educated native who spoke Eng- 

 lish perfectly, and whom I immediately proceeded to question 

 about the localities where I might find certain animals, particularly 



