220 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 
back. The color is brown, often tawny white. The horns are 
truly monstrous, being occasionally, according to good authority, 
as long as thirty-nine inches each, with a basal girth as high as 
nineteen inches. This animal is exceedingly wary, avoiding 
cultivated or open country of any kind, and, as has been said, 
Vic. 40. The gaur, or great wild ox of the highlands of India 
is never domesticated. He is a true wild ox in every partic- 
ular, as large, undoubtedly, as the Bos primigcnus of Europe 
ever was. 
The gayal, sometimes called mithan, is a semidomesticated 
and near relative of the gaur, inhabiting the hilly lands of north- 
eastern India. It is smaller than the gaur, and, being lower at 
the withers and higher at the hump, stands with his back nearly 
level. He runs wild in the more remote districts, and is to be 
