 ¥uly 16, 1885] 
MAMMGRL: 
243 
about the Canadian flora is how extremely few species 
enter into it that are not found in the United States. The 
general question of the characteristics of the North 
American flora was fully discussed by Dr. Asa Gray in 
an address to the biological section of the British Asso- 
ciation at Montreal, which was published in the issue for 
November, 1884, of the American Fournal of Science. 
Two of its leading characteristics as compared with 
Europe are the abundant development of peculiar types 
of Compositze and Ericacez. It is to this present cata- 
logue that we must turn for full details on such matters 
as these in application to the northern area. One of the 
most curious instances of a locality for a well-marked 
plant widely distant from its main area is furnished by 
the occurrence of Ca//una vulgaris in very small quantity 
in Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, and Nova Scotia. 
It is not known on the American continent, and the 
genus: £7y7ca is entirely absent. A large number of 
common European plants, such as Bellis perennis, Chrys- 
anthemum Leucanthemum, Tussilago Farfara, Hyoscy- 
amus niger, and Anagallis arvensis are fully naturalised 
in Canada. Some British species, such as Gentiana 
Amarella and Hieracium umbellatum are represented in 
Canada by varieties mostly readily distinguishable from 
the European type. Of plants alpine in their European 
range which are widely spread in British North America 
we have instances in Lodseleuria procumbens, Arctosta- 
phyllos alpina, Linnea borealis, Lobelia Dortmanna, 
Vaccinium uliginosum, and V. Vitis-idea,; and of plants 
of wide European and British dispersion at a lower level 
in Campanula rotundifolia, Achillea Millefolium, Vz- 
burnum Opulus, Pyrola minor, and Andromeda polifolia. 
Mr. Macoun has consulted Dr. Asa Gray and Dr. Sereno 
Watson on all points of doubtful identification, and used 
the same nomenclature and standard of specific limita- 
tion. J: GB: 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 
or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 
No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 
[The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 
as short as possible, The pressure on his space is so great 
that it is impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 
of communications containing interesting and novel facts. 
The Zoology of Dr, Riebeck’s ‘‘ Chittagong Hill Tribes.” 
—The Gayal and Gaur 
In Nature for June 25 (ante, p. 169) there appeared a review 
of the late Dr. Emil Riebeck’s ‘‘ Chittagong Hill Tribes.” The 
contributions of the specialists who are entitled ‘the foremost 
naturalists of Germany ” are mentioned as “separate mono- 
graphs of great value.” 
This is no stinted praise, and as one of the separate mono- 
graphs, that on the zoology, by Dr. Julius Kuhn, is especially 
noticed, I took the earliest opportunity of reading what I antici- 
pated would prove a very interesting essay on the fauna of a 
rather imperfectly-known region. 
I will only say that I was disappointed. The zoological 
“monograph ” consists of four pages, two and a half of which 
are taken up by Dr. Kuhn’s remarks on the gayal and gaur. 
These are the only portions deserving notice; fhe remaining 
page and a half contain notes, all trivial, and some seriously 
Incorrect, on skulls of a rhinoceros, a bear, and a monkey, of 
only one of which a specific determination is attempted, and in 
that instance the name given is, I believe, wrong. Perhaps 
these notes are not by Dr. Kuhn, for his observations on the 
gayal (Bos frontalis y. gaveus) and the gaur (B. gaurus v, 
cavifrons) show some acquaintance, though an imperfect one, 
with the literature of the subject. Your reviewer credits Dr. 
Kuhn with the discovery that ‘‘the gayal or wild ox of Bengal, 
Assam, and Further India does not differ specifically from the 
gaur of India proper,” and Dr. Kuhn writes apparently under 
the impression that the occurrence of the gaur east of the Bay 
of Bengal is not known. The range of the gaur throughout 
Assam, Tipperah, Chittagong, Burmah, and the Malay peninsula 
has, however, been well known for thirty years at least, and has 
been repeatedly described by Cantor, Blyth, Jerdon, and other 
naturalists, whilst the head of a Tenasserim gaur was well 
ngured nearly fifty years ago in the ¥ozsna/ of the Royal Asiatic 
Society (vol. iii, 1836, p. 50). The fact that the wild gaur is 
called gayal by the natives of some parts of India is also not 
new. The name by which the tame gayal, Bos fronialis, is 
generally known in the country is not gaya/, but mithan. 
Dr. Kuhn's principal object is to show that the gayal may 
be a domesticated race of the gaur. It would be impossible to 
do justice to the subject without going into considerable detail, 
but the first stage in the inquiry is one to which no reference is 
made by Dr. Kuhn. This is the question whether Bos frontalis, 
the gayal, exists as a distinct species in the wild state, as stated 
by Lambert, Colebrooke, Horsfield, Blyth, and others, or 
whether, as lately urged by Mr. J. Sarbo (Proc. Z.S., 1883, p. 142), 
there is no such thing as a wild gayal. A very valuable contri- 
bution to the history of these animals was published twenty-five 
years ago by Blyth in the /Jowrnal of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, vol. xxix. 282, in a paper ‘‘On the Flat-horned 
Taurine Cattle of South-East Asia.” This paper was, I think, 
subsequently republished in either Zazd and Water or the 
Fidd, but 1 am not certain. One most important circumstance 
mentioned by Blyth on apparently excellent authority is that the 
gaur is kept tame in the interior of the Chittagong hills, and, as 
a tame animal, is quite distinct from Bos frontalis. If this is the 
case hybrids are very likely to occur, for the gayal breeds freely 
with the much less nearly allied zebu, and such hybrids may 
account for the occurrence of forms intermediate between the 
gayal and gaur. An indication that such forms exist is, so far 
as I can see, the only evidence brought forward by Dr. Kuhn in 
favour of the gayal being a domesticated race of the gaur, his 
main argument ; his supposed discovery that the tame gayal and 
wild gaur inhabit the same country being a singularly fine 
example of a sddus eque. 
It will, I hope, be understood that these observations apply 
solely to the zoological portion of Dr. Riebeck’s work; though, in 
connection with this, in another part of the book, I remark that 
Plate 14, Fig. 2, which represents a rodent’s—probably a 
squirrel’s—skull, is called in the explanation of the plate ‘‘the 
skull of a musk-deer” ! Your reviewer's opinion of the work 
is doubtless founded on the anthropological and ethnological 
portions; I only dissent from the views expressed as to the 
zoological monograph. W. T. BLANFORD 
July 11 
‘““The Fauna of the Seashore” 
In the abstract of Prof. Moseley’s interesting lecture on ‘* The 
Fauna of the Seashore,” published in the current number of 
NATURE (p. 212) several agents are referred to as competent to 
call into play the tendencies to vary which are embodied in each 
species. These, whether suggested by Prof. Lovén or the 
author of the lecture, include—light and shade, temperature, 
currents, food, enemies, favourable condition of water for respira- 
tion, and the variation of conditions produced by tides. Tf 
venture to think that one very important factor in the variation 
of the marine fauna, if not the most important, has been left out 
of the list: I refer to marine waves. 
The action of waves on the littoral fauna is not only extremely 
severe, but it is of constant recurrence ; and failure to resist it 
does not merely involve some minor disadvantage or incon- 
venience to the object attacked, but its very existence. 
A point commonly overlooked by naturalists is the severity of 
the wave-action arising from the reciprocal character of the 
wave-currents. Human bipeds occasionally experience the in- 
convenience of a shifting current when encountering opposing 
blasts of wind at some street corner during a gale. The marine 
littoral fauna, living in a much denser medium, encounter two 
analogous currents for every passing wave heavy enough to affect 
the bottom, and have to encounter these currents without cessa- 
tion for the days or weeks the storm may last. Any failure to 
