96 



November 23, 1852. 

 Dr. Gray, F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 

 The following papers were read : — 

 1. Note on the Gouwa (Bos frontalis) of Western India, 



CALLED "the BiSON " BY ENGLISH RESIDENTS. 



By Capt. J. Wycliffe Thompson. 



Eliot Vale, Blackheatb, Kent, 



20th Nov. 1852. 



The size of the beast I cannot state with any exactness, having had 

 no means of judging beyond forming an estimate by the eye of the 

 carcase as it lay on the ground before me. The common report 

 amongst Indian sportsmen is, that the old bull stands 19 hands 

 (6 feet 4 inches) at the shoulder. Upon what grounds this estimate 

 rests I cannot say, but it is in some degree confirmed by my own 

 impression, that an old bull was pretty nearly equal in height and 

 bulk to one of the very largest of the London Dray-horses. The 

 colour is chocolate-brown, deepening in shade on the belly ; the 

 lower part of the leg is of a dirty yellow- brownish white from the 

 foot upwards to a little above the knee in the fore and the hock in 

 the hind leg, the line of demarcation between the white and the 

 chocolate being abrupt, as in a ' white-stockinged ' horse. The pro- 

 file of the face is decidedly curved, the part of the forehead between 

 the horns is excessively raised in a kind of ridge, of which traces are 

 to be seen in the skulls, though in these it is much less strongly 

 marked than in the live animal. The shoulder is raised, not in a 

 hump like that of the Brahminee bull or common Indian ox, but in 

 a kind of ridge, giving the idea that the spine, beginning at the 

 shoulder, had been unnaturally raised, and carried at that elevatiob 

 some way to the rear, and then allowed suddenly to drop into the 

 ordinary level of the back. The forehead, including the high ridge 

 between the horns, inclines to ash-colour ; the tail is small and short. 

 The only part of the country in which I have met with these 

 animals is on the " Suhyadri" mountains or "Western Ghauts," a 

 narrow belt of wild, broken, and thickly-wooded country dividing the 

 high lands of the Deccan or Maratha country from the low land of 

 the Concan or country bordering the margin of the sea. This Ghaut 

 country is of most peculiar appearance : anything that can be called 

 a plain does not exist in it ; it is a succession of the most rugged 

 hills and of the most wild, deep ravines ; the whole, with the excep- 

 tion of here and there a bare ridge of hill, covered vnth a dense mass 

 of bushes, brushwood, tall ferns and flowering plants, so thick that 

 it is frequently necessary to clear a road with bill-hooks ; imbedded 

 in this mass of vegetation lie broken crags of brown rock ; above all 

 this rise clumps of forest trees, and above these again rises some 

 rugged hill-side crowned by a bare perpendicular scarp of black rock. 



