596 MR. W. T. BLANFORD ON THE INDIAN GAUR. [NoV. 4, 



bisontiiie subdivision, although they were referred to the latter by 

 Hamilton Smith and others. 



Our present knowledge of the range of the three species of this 

 section of Sos may be thus summarized : — 



Bos gaurus. — The Gaur is found in all the larger forest-tracts of 

 the Indian Peninsula from the Ganges to Cape Comorin, but not in 

 Ceylon. Its extreme north-western range, at present, I believe to 

 be in the neighbourhood of the river Nerbudda east of Broach, and 

 west of long. 80° E. the valley of the Nerbudda forms approximately 

 its northern limit, though it may in places exist a little further north. 

 It does not inhabit the grass-jungles of the great Indus and Ganges 

 plain, except to the eastward in the neighbourhood of the Himalayas ; 

 in fact this animal is seldom, if ever, found far away from hilly 

 ground. It occurs in the forests along the base of the Himalayas 

 as far west as Nepal, and is met with iu the hill-regions south of 

 Assam and thence in all suitable localities throughout Burma and the 

 other countries immediately east of the Bay of Bengal down to the 

 southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula, where its occurrence is 

 no new discovery, for Blyth recorded its existence there in the paper 

 already quoted *. The range of the Gaur in Siam, Cochin China, 

 Tonquin, &c. does not appear to have been ascertained with any 

 certainty ; it is said to occur in Siam, but I can find no record of its 

 occurrence further east, and no mention of the existence of any flat- 

 horned bovine in South China is made by Swinhoe. 



The Gaur is unknown in the Malay islands and in Ceylon, but 

 the statement has repeatedly been made that it formerly inhabited the 

 latter. I am disposed to think this doubtful, and I quite agree with 

 Sanderson " in my surprise that the Gaur should have disappeared 

 from a region where wild Elephants are still found in large numbers. 

 Throughout the Peninsula of India the reverse is the case ; the 

 Elephant has, I think, clearly been the first to disappear, as in the 

 Satpuras, the Nortliern Syhadri, and throughout parts of Chtitia 

 Nagjiur, where the Gaur still occurs. A belief in the former occur- 

 rence of Bos gaurus in Ceylon is partly founded on the fact that 

 Knox, writing in 1681, mentioned under the name of Guavera an 

 animal kept tame at Kandy, and partly on Kelaart's statement ^ that 

 " the Kandyans also say that the Goura once roamed through those 

 forests which to the present day are called after the Goura, Goura- 

 Ellia, Goura-Koodie, &c." On the other hand, it is by no means 

 improbable that the Gaur, like the Tiger, never inhabited Ceylon, a 

 circumstance very possibly due to the animal not having migrated 

 into Southern India until after Ceylon had been separated by sea. 



Bos sondaicus. — The Banteng is entirely confined to countries east 

 of the Bay of Bengal. The northernmost localities from which it 



' Cantor too, in 184fi, stated that the Gaur was " umuerous in the Malayan 

 Peninsula " (J. A. S. B. xv. p. 273). 



^ ' Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India,' p. 243. 



^ Prodronius Faun. Zeyl. p. 87. In Griffith's ' Cuvier,' v. p. 410, too, it is 

 stated tliat tlie wild os or Guavera of Ceylon wassliot by British parties during 

 the war with Kandy. But the animals shut may have been wild Buffaloes. 



