I860.] On the Fiat-horned Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. 297 



biting the Indo-Chinese countries ; and our Peguan specimen has 

 remarkably albescent horns, while the single horn from Arakan is 

 darker, and resembles the Javanese examples in our museum. The 

 next and more detailed notice which we can now refer, without hesi- 

 tation, to this species, occurs in Herbert's ' Gleanings in Science,' 

 III, 61. It would appear that a skull and horns of this animal were 

 presented to the Society at its Meeting of February 2nd, 1831 ;* 

 " with a descriptive notice by Mr. Maingy ; by which it appears, that, 

 when full grown, it is about thirteen hands high, and of a most 

 beautiful red colour, except under the belly which is white. It has 

 no hump, like the cow of India. Altogether, it resembles the red 

 cow of England, but is a much handsomer animal. The bull is a 

 large and fine animal, and, with the exception of having a white 

 forehead, resembles the cow. Mr. Maingy has seen twenty or more 

 of these animals in a herd, but it is a very difficult thing to get a 

 shot at them, as they have a most acute sense of hearing and smell- 

 ing ; one or two appear to act as sentinels, while the others graze or 

 drink. If, in snuffing the air, they find it tainted, off they fly in a 

 moment, with a speed almost inconceivable, considering the form and 

 bulk of the animal." 



In the foregoing descriptions, the invariable great white patch 

 on each buttock (whence the name leucoprymnos bestowed on the 

 hybrid by M.M. Quoy and Graymard) is unnoticed, as also the 

 dark colour of the old bull : but the alleged " white forehead" of 

 the bull refers doubtlessly to the mass of thickened corneous 

 substance between the horns, which, in our larger Javanese frontlet, 

 is thick and solid enough to turn a musket-ball.f (Vide S. Miiller's 

 figure of the mature bull.) But, in a notice of " the Burmese wild 

 Cow, or ' Sine Bar,' which appeared in the ' Bengal Sporting Maga- 



* These were not in the museum when I took charge of it in 1841 ; but only 

 two frontlets from Java, presented by Prince William Henry of the Netherlands 

 (J. A. S. VI, 987), one of which has since been forwarded to the India-house 

 museum. 



t In our smaller Javanese frontlet (figured J. A. S. XI, 490), a portion of 

 this enormously thickened epidermis remains attached to the base of each horn, 

 which led Mr. Hodgson to remark, when looking at these specimens as they 

 hung up, that the horns were less approximated at base in the Peguan specimen. 

 However, on close examination, the true base of the horn is seen to be well 

 defined, and the supposed distinction disappears. 



2 H 



