1S60.] On tie Mat-horned Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. 287 



Socotra, the cattle are of the humpless European or N. Asiatic type.* 

 Both humped and humpless cattle are represented in the old Egyptian 

 paintings ; and the humpless reappear in S. Africa, in the remarkable 

 indigenous (so far as known) Caffre cattle, and I have seen fossil remains 

 of the same cylindrical-horned humpless type from the banks of a tribu- 

 tary of the Gariep river.f In Madagascar, also, where the tame cattle 



* Vide Wellsted, in Journ. Soy. Oeogr. Soc. V, 200. On the confines of India, 

 this European and also Tartar type of humpless cattle comes round, evidently 

 from the east-ward, into Butan. But the Chinese Taurines (so far as I can 

 learn) are mostly hybrid, being variously intermediate to the humped and 

 humpless species : except, however, towards the north ; and huge herds of 

 splendid Tartar cattle are pastured beyond the great wall of China, — many of 

 these, with vast troops of horses, &c, being the property of the emperor. (Vide 

 Timkowski and others.) According to Major It. C. Tytler, a white breed of 

 humpless (?) cattle is reared and highly prized by the natives of Dacca, who 

 never turn them out to pasture. It has " little or no symptoms of a hump." 

 Ann. 31. N. H. 2nd series, XIV (1854), 177. 



f Tide Proc. Geol. Soc. 1840, p. 152. Capt. Speke observed some very fine 

 humpless cattle on the N. W. shore of the Tanganyika lake, near the equator. 

 " Very large cattle, bearing horns of stupendous size. They are of an uniform 

 red colour, like our Devonshire breed, but attain a much greater height and 

 size." Northward, again, on the shore of his grand Victoria Nyanza lake, he 

 remarks that — " The cows, unlike the Tanganyika ones, are small and short- 

 horned, and are of a variety of colours. They carry a hump, like the Brahmini 

 bull, but give very little milk." Vide 'Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,' 

 No. DXXVIII (October, 1859), pp. 392, 398. A little further northward, 

 in the Bari country on the shores of the White Nile, between 4° and 5° 

 N. lat., M. Ferdinand Werne tells us — "We remark, as usual among the light- 

 coloured cows, many quite white, and few black or dapple. The bulls have the 

 customary high and thick humps ; the cows, on the contrary, have exactly the 

 appearance of those at Emmerich on the Rhine [?] ; their horns are twisted in 

 a surprisingly handsome form, and set off with flaky hair, as well as the ears. 

 They carry the latter erect, by which means the head, and the lively eye, acquire 

 a brisk and intelligent expression." (Werne's Narrative of Expedition to dis- 

 cover the Sources of the Wliite Nile, in the years 1840, 1841, O'Reilly's transla- 

 tion, II, 94.) It is not likely that the cows referred to should be entirely 

 humpless ; and the large lustrous eye is everywhere one of the many character- 

 istics of the humped species, as is the lanceolate form of ear (which I suppose 

 is referred to), as contrasted with the broad round ears of the humpless kind ; 

 and in hybrids of different degrees of admixture the proportion is more readily 

 seen in the shape of the ear than in aught else. Moreover, it seems that, as in 

 India, white or greyish-white humped cattle predominate ; but the black tail- 

 tuft is constant, except in the rare case of an albino. Between 6° and 7° N. 

 lat., among the Kek or Kiak nation, we learn, from the same authority, that — 

 "The cattle are generally of a light colour, of moderate size, and have long 

 beautifully twisted horns, some of which are turned backwards [as also in India]. 

 The bulls have large speckled humps, such as are seen in the hieroglyphics ; the 

 cows, on the contrary, only a little elevation on the shoulders." {Ibid. I, 175.) 

 As with the humped cow elsewhere; and when Col. Sykes mentions that this 

 species of cattle, " when early trained to labour or to carriage, is nearly desti- 

 tute of the hump" (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1831, p. 105), he refers to cows and oxen 

 only ; for the labouring bull has always a well developed hump, especially if 

 well fed, and this has much to do with the filling out of the hump in oxen and 



