e 
1866. ] Notes and Queries. 5 
from the ablest downwards. I would enquire, therefore, through the 
pages of this Journal, to what instances Dr. Gray can allude, as the 
fact is certainly novel to those in India. The Governor of Rangoon, 
at the time of the last war, I am told, had a pair of Gour sufficiently 
tame to be yoked in a cart, but this is quite insufficient to establish 
their claim to be viewed as semi-domesticated. In India, the difficulty 
of rearing the calves is notorious. 
Again, immediately before the passage I have quoted above, Dr. 
Gray remarks, “‘ In the lower and warmer region of Central and South- 
ern Asia, the Zebra has been completely domesticated.” 
In the passage, Dr. Gray is alluding to wild species brought by 
man into a state of domestication, and I confess to some curiosity as 
to the wild stock of the domesticated Zebra. There is, I fancy, some 
little confusion, however, in Dr. Gray’s ideas here, as, on the previous 
66 ry 1) 66 
page, he tells us, ‘the oxen 
-are never found truly wild.” 
The distinction, too, which Dr. Gray draws (loc. cit.) between the 
“truly domesticated’”’ animals, the ox, the sheep, the horse, the camel, 
the dog and the cat, and the “‘ semi-domesticated,” as the buffalo, the 
goat, the pig, the rabbit, the reindeer, the yak &c., appears forced 
and to a great extent imaginary. 
The distinction between these two classes of animals is more due to 
the efforts of the Breeder than to mere domestication, and I should have 
thought, that the highest triumphs of some of our rabbit fancies and of 
our breeds of pigs merited quite as much as our ‘‘sheep”’ to be con- 
sidered as “ truly domesticated,” if thereby is intended an unnatural 
deviation from the wild stock, solely produced by the art of the 
Breeder. 
I cannot enter at greater length on this most interesting question, 
but I hope that some of the readers of this Journal who have perused 
Dr. Gray’s report, will be able to furnish some explanation of the 
points indicated above. 
Another query I would ask is, to what race of Calotes mystaceus 
can Gunther refer to, when he states that “an old male measures 
nearly 24 inches, the tail taking 19 inches?” Now Calotes mystaceus 
is common in Birma, and more than a score have passed through my 
hands, but no specimen that I ever saw attained to even 12 inches of 
total length ! 
