MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 541 
cow less in number ; one of them was a dark chestnut red like the victim of 
my mistake. 
Of bulls seen subsequently, two were red, two dark bay, and four were khaki. 
The big bull illustrated was one of the latter. 
In Siam in April 1920, while travelling in the Meping valley near 
the head ofitsfeeder the Klong Klung, I came on a herd of Tsine 
while I was on the march. I was walking a quarter of a mile 
ahead of my transport and saw the herd about 200 yards below me 
in some open jungle. It consisted of six cows and two bulls: one bull, 
a young one of slightly darker red than the cows, the other of most unusual colour- 
ing. He was a big beast, but with only a moderate pair of horns ; grey down to 
his median lateral line and, below that, dark red with the usual white shanks : 
he seemed much bulkier and less active than the bulls I saw in Burma, and had 
a slight but decided hump. In fact in build he appeared as much bison as Tsine. 
I ran down to the herd trying to get close in, as I had only a 12-bore and lethal 
bullets with me, and by using a fallen tree as cover, got within 20 yards. I tried 
both barrels and had a miss-fire with each, The herd made off and ran into 
my transport then turned and bolted, the main body clearing right away but 
the bigger bull came straight back towards me. I had changed the cartridges 
and waited till he got within 20 yards of me, then had two more miss-fires. The 
bull came within ten yards, then pulled up and thundered away in a fresh direc- 
tion. I was standing in high undergrowth and it was then quite evident that 
he had not really seen me before, but if I had killed him while he was coming 
towards me I should have been convinced that he was charging unprovoked. I 
found that the cartridges were some which had got wet and which I had told my 
orderly to throw away, but instead he had dried them in the sun and replaced 
them in my haversac. 
That Tsine can be really dangerous the following incident will show. 
I was after bison one day in July 1914 in a very remote bit of jungle in the 
Pegu Yomas, and during the morning repeatedly crossed the tracks of a solitary 
bull Tsine, which had evidently been living there for a long time. This was curi- 
ous as I had seen no other Tsine tracks, of bull or cow, for several miles. As I 
could find no fresh bison tracks I took up some 24 hour old tracks of this Tsine 
about mid-day, and ran them for nearly an hour to the flat top of a ridge where 
I decided to have lunch. [I had passed the rifle to the Burman gun-bearer and 
turned round to call up the tiffin-cooli, who was climbing the slope below, when I 
heard a crashing behind me : I looked back just in time to see a big khaki-coloured 
bull Tsine launch himself full speed towards me from a clump of small cane about 
30 yards away. The Burman tried to bolt with the rifle, and the delay in grabb- 
ing it from him brought the bull right on top of me, so that I had difficulty 
in dodging him. I had intended swinging round and putting a bullet behind 
his ribs, but he whipped round, extraordinarily quickly for so large an animal, 
and hunted me in and out of the bamboo clumps so that I finally only just saved 
myself by diving sideways between two of them while he charged past. He 
then tried the Burmans and went off just as I had picked myself up in time to 
fire a hasty shot at him. I hit him a shade too far back but on following him 
up found he had already lain down twice in less than a couple of miles and I felt 
certain of getting him, when a tremendous rain-storm broke and washed out 
all the tracks. I fancy he must have been previously wounded and gone off to 
recover with, naturally, a rather soured temper. He had fed back on his tracks 
and had been lying down in the patch of young cane. 
This, I may say, is the only personal instance I have ever had, in twenty years 
of big game shooting, of an unprovoked attack by a wild beast. 
A point I have not seen noted with regard to the cows is that the direction of 
their horns is so much backwards and inwards that the points often cross behind 
the head inanoldfemale. It is usually stated that the finest bulls are solitary. 
