Species of Bovine Animals, 6365 



The yak (Bos poephagus or B.grunniens, or Boephagus grunniens) 

 is indigenous to High Tibet, and especially to Eastern Tibet, where 

 still tolerably numerous in the wild state, though the species (as every 

 one knows) is extensively domesticated, and the ordinary tame cattle 

 of that elevated portion of the globe. The wild animal is known 

 as the dong, or ban chour, and an interesting notice of it will be 

 found in the ■ Friend of India' for September 30th last. 



We now come to the taurines, and among them may be recognised 

 three principal groups : — 1, that of the humped cattle ; 2, that of 

 which the European bull is characteristic ; and 3, the mostly tro- 

 pical group with flattened horns. All are more or less smooth- 

 coated, our British Highland cattle displaying about the extreme of 

 shagginess among the taurines. 



The humped ox (Bos indie us vel gibbosus) is unknown in an abori- 

 ginally wild state ; but large herds, the descendants of domestic cattle, 

 still roam about the northern parts of Oudh and Rohilkund, and thus 

 show that the species can maintain its existence, unaided by man, in 

 a region infested by tigers.* It does not appear that it has hitherto 

 been met with in a fossil state, nor can we venture to assert in what 

 country it is truly indigenous ; for the domestic races are spread over 



* These feral " zebus " are noticed by Captain (now Colonel Sir T. Proby) Cautley, 

 in the ' Asiatic Society's Journal ' for 1840. p. 623. He remarks that, " In the districts 

 of Akharpur and Dostpur, in the province of Oudh, large herds of black oxen are, or 

 were, to be found in the wild uncultivated tracts, a fact to which I can bear testimony 

 from my own personal observation, having, in 1820, come in contact with a very large 

 herd of these beasts, of which we were only fortunate enough to kill one, their excessive 

 shyness and wildness preventing us from a near approach at any second opportunity." 

 Another writer notices herds of these wild humped cattle as occurring on the road from 

 Agra to Bareilly. Again, in Dr. Butter's * Outlines of the Topography and Statistics 

 of the Southern Districts of Oudh, and of the Cantonment of Sultanpore — Oudh,' we 

 are informed that " Bengali bulls and cows are found near Harpu," — i.e. living wild. 

 Their numbers would even seem to have increased of late years, to judge from a notice 

 of them which we saw not long ago in one of the newspapers, in which attention was 

 directed to their hides and horns as objects of commerce. As Dr. Butter distinctly 

 calls them " Bengali bulls and cows," it follows that they are of the small race common 

 in the country, as distinguished from the large cattle so numerous in the Upper Pro- 

 vinces ; and Cautley 's designation of them as " herds of black oxen " would seem to 

 imply uniformity of colouring, as in aboriginally wild species. We should like, too, 

 to know if their horns assume constantly the typical size and flexure ; for these are 

 matters of considerable interest to a naturalist. The animals are understood to have 

 gone wild at one or more epochs, when whole districts were devastated in the grand 

 old style, and in the hue old times of wholesale rapine and slaughter, the remembrance 

 of which is still so fondly cherished by very many. 



