1S60.] On the Flat-horned Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. 295 



perfectly gentle and quiet ; and they habitually pass the night and 

 great part of the day beneath the raised habitations of then- owners : 

 and M. Barbe further mentions that he was greatly astonished at the 

 facility with which these enormous cattle ascended and descended 

 heights so steep and precipitous, that, had he not witnessed the feat, 

 he would scarcely have been inclined to credit it." The last observa- 

 tion points rather to the Gayal than to the Gaour ! 



As a rule, the proper habitat of the Graour is an undulating 

 grassy table-land intermixed with forest ; the heavy and Buffalo- 

 shaped G-ayal being habitually much more of a climber, and also more 

 exclusively affecting the dense craggy forest, where it browses 

 in preference to grazing ; the Graour being much more of a grazer. 

 Having possessed both species alive, I can testify to this differ- 

 ence in their feeding. The Gaour appears to be diffused through- 

 out the Indo-Chinese countries, and all down the Malayan peninsula 

 to the extreme south ; but has not been observed on any of the great 

 islands of the archipelago. I have lately seen the skull with horns of 

 an old bull from the mainland near Singapore ; and in 1858 I purchased 

 a live Gaour-calf that was brought from Singapore to Calcutta, toge- 

 ther with a Malayan Tapir. This calf was in high health when I 

 shipped him for England, and as tame and tractable as any domestic 

 animal, yet full of life and frolic ; but he was suddenly taken ill 

 when nearing the Cape, and died on the following or next day. He 

 was very impatient of the sun, even at the height of the cold weather 

 (so called) in Calcutta ; which rendered it difficult to secure a photo- 

 graph of the animal, but a good one was taken, and copied in the 

 ' Illustrated London News ;' only the artist must needs improve 

 upon nature by lengthening the tail beyond the hocks, which detracts 

 from the vraisemhlance of the wood-cut. The Gaour is the only 

 species of the group which inhabits m-Brahmaputran India, in all 

 suitable districts ; extending formerly to Ceylon, where we recognise 

 it as the Guavera of Knox ; and in Johnson's ' Indian Field Sports,' it 

 is familiarly referred to as "the Gour (a kind of wild bullock)" 

 inhabiting, in about 1796, the hill-country hording on the Damuda, 

 through which the Grand Trunk Boad now runs from Baniganj to 

 Shergatti, — a district from which it has been long since extirpated, 

 or has retired some hundreds of miles further west. It is still 



