579 



On Bos Gaurus. By W. Elliot, Esq. 31. C. S. (from the Madras 

 Journal of Literature and Science.) 



The notice of tlie Bovine Genera by Mr. Hodgson of Nepal, published 

 in No. 114, and the observations on Bos Gaurus by that able naturalist 

 and by Dr. Spilsbury, which have already appeared in this Journal, 

 may be well followed up by an extract from Mr. Walter Elliot's (Madras 

 Civil Service) " Catalogue of the Mammalia in the southern Mahratta 

 country," describing the animal above named, with reference to an article 

 by Mr. Hodgson on the same subject in the 6th vol. of this Journal. One 

 or two short notes have been appended by Mr. Hodgson to Mr. Elliot's 

 paper, which appear with this reprint of it. By thus borrowing Mr. 

 Elliot's excellent paper from the Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 

 I shall have been enabled to unite with and submit to my readers all that 

 intelligent naturalists in various parts of India have observed and re- 

 corded regarding one of the most remarkable of Indian quadrupeds 

 "indicated distinctly," says Mr. Elliot, writing in 1840, "only within 

 the last two years," and doubly remarkable from its apparent identity 

 with the extinct species, fossil remains of which have been exhumed in 

 Europe. 



It may be worth while to quote a curious notice, one of the earliest, 

 if not the earliest, by any English writer, of the Bos Gaurus, from the 

 narrative of his captivity in Candy by Capt. Knox, (a. d. 1673,) who re- 

 sided 19 years in the country : I met casually with it, and do not know 

 but that it may have been quoted before. The writer is however so 

 correct, and sagacious an observer, that I venture to incur the risk of re- 

 petition in order to supply testimony to the existence of the Bos Gaurus 

 in Ceylon at the time of his confinement there. 



(Knox's Historical relation of Ceylon, Chapter VI.) " Here are also wild 

 buffaloes ; also a sort of beast they call gauvera, so much resembling a 

 bull, that I think it one of that kind : his back stands up with a sharp 

 ridge ; all his four feet white up half his legs. I never saw but one, which 

 was kept among the King's creatures." Qj 



58. — Bos (Bibos) Cavifrons^ Hodgson — Journal Asiatic Society 

 Bengal, vol. vi. (1837) pp. 223, 499, 745. 

 Bos Gaurus, Griffiths. — Gour, Geoff. 

 Kar kona, Canarese. 



Jungli khoolga, Dekhani. 

 Gaviya, Mahratta. 



It is somewhat remarkable that one of the largest animals of the In- 

 dian Fauna, frequenting all the extensive forest tracts from Cape Co- 



