302 On tie Flat-horned Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. [No. 3, 



found wild in the Siamese forests, and exists very generally in the 

 domestic state, particularly in the Southern provinces. Those we 

 saw about the capital were short-limbed, compactly made, and often 

 without horns, being never of the white or grey colour so prevalent 

 among the cattle of Hindustan. They also want the hump on the 

 shoulders which characterises the latter. They are used only in 

 agricultural labour, and the slaughter of them, publicly at least, is 

 forbidden even to strangers. Hence, during our stay, our servants 

 were obliged to go three or four miles out of town, and to slaughter 

 the animals at night. The wild cattle, for the protection of religion 

 does not extend to them, are shot by professed hunters, on account 

 of their hides, horns, bones, and flesh, which last, converted into jerked 

 beef, forms an article of commerce with China."* Are domesticated 

 Bantenars here intended ? The existence of hornless individuals is 



* ' Mission to Siam and Cochin China,' p. 430. 



The people of Laos "have a great many cattle, very small, which yield scarcely 

 any milk, and which they never think of using. When we told them that in 

 our country the milk of the cow was much esteemed, and that it formed a 

 savoury food, they laughed, and only held our countrymen in contempt." 

 (Grandjean, in the Chinese Repository', as quoted by Sir J. Bowring). This 

 prejudice against the milk of the cow seems to be common to all the Indo- 

 Chinese nations, and prevails also in China, whilst the Mantchurian Tartars are 

 great consumers of milk. Even the savages of the Naga hills, bordering on 

 Asain, reject milk as food, in the belief that it is of excrementitious nature. 



In Earl's ' Voyage to the Molucca Islands and New Guinea' (p. 361), we are 

 informed that "Wild cattle are numerous in Timor Laut, of a brown colour, 

 and size about the same as that of two-year old cattle in Holland. The natives 

 catch them with rattan, and also shoot them with arrows." 



The Tamarao of the island of Mindoro (one of the Philippines), as I was 

 informed by Mr. Hugh Cuming, is a small bovine species, but fierce and dan- 

 gerous to attack, of a dark colour, with horns rising at an angle of about 45° 

 from the forehead." The nearly similar name Tambadao is applied in Borneo to 

 the Banteng. 



These various wild races and humpless tame races of S. E. Asia and its archi- 

 pelago demand investigation ; and though I have before published in the So- 

 ciety's Journal several of the notices here cited, it is convenient to bring them 

 together, to save trotible in reference. What animal the following passage refers 

 to, in Mrs. Graham's work in Ceylon, I am unable even to conjecture ; and cer- 

 tainly do not credit the existence of such a creature. At the Governor's house, 

 this lady " saw, feeding by himself, an animal no less beautiful than terrible, — 

 the wild bull, whose milk-white hide is adorned with a black flowing mane !" 

 The description is explicit enough, so far as it goes, but most assuredly no such 

 animal is known to naturalists ; and with the example before us, of what a 

 writer of Bishop Heber's stamp can make of the Gayal, we may cease to wonder 

 at any amount of vagary of the kind on the part of unscientific observers ; 

 though why people of education, who undertake to describe or notice an 

 animal, however cursorily, should make such sorry use of their eyes is difficult 

 to comprehend. 



