284 On the Mat-homed Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. [No. 3, 



cipient species ; and most assuredly the dividing line between what 

 are variously accepted as species or as varieties cannot oftentimes be 

 traced : nevertheless, it is admitted by Mr. Darwin that the mass of 

 what are generally considered as species have acquired a high degree 

 of persistency, and arguments pro and con are abundantly supplied by 

 the Bovines, as by endless other groups : on the one hand, we have the 

 multitudinons races of cylindrical-horned domestic cattle, whether 

 humped or humpless, which surely no naturalist would go the length 

 of supposing to be so many sepárate and distinct creations ; and, on 

 the other hand, we have the phenomenon of three wild species, or most 

 strongly characterized races (more strongly characterized apart than 

 are any of the domestic races of humped or humpless Taurines respec- 

 tively), yet exhibiting many peculiarities in common, inhabiting to 

 a great extent the very same región, but maintaining their distinc- 

 tive characters wherever found, and never (so far as known) hybridiz- 

 ing one with another, though at least two of them have interbred in a 

 state of domestication (and one of them even in the wild state) with 

 the ordinary tame humped cattle of the tropical regions of the major 

 continent.* All three are domestic oble, as will be shewn ; and as 

 regards the reputed indomitable nature of one of them, the gigantic 

 Gaour (Gr. gaurus), we have only to reflect on the fact, how very 

 readily the tamest and one of the most thoroughly and completely 

 domesticated of all tame creatures, the humped Ox (Bos or Zebus 

 gibbostjs) relapses into a condition of feral wildness, unsurpassed even 

 by the Gaour itself, and assuredly beyond that of the renowned 

 Chillingham cattle of Northumberland, if not also of the feral hump- 

 less cattle of S. America and elsewhere.f 



* The Bos sglhetanus, F. Cuv., is founded upon a hybrid Gayál (G. peontalis) 

 of this kind ; and the B. leucoprymnos, Quoy and Gaymard, upon a hybrid 

 Banteng (G. sondaicus). Sir T. Stamford Raines remarks, in his History of Java, 

 that " the degenerate domestic cows [of that island, humped,] are sometimes 

 driven into the forest to couple with the wild Banteng, for the sake of improving 

 the breed." Barón Cuvier supposed that the true Gayál was a hybrid between 

 the humped cattle and the Buffalo ; but he seems to have known only the hybrid 

 animal, from the description and figures sent by M. Duvaucel and published by 

 his brother in the Mamm. Lithog. 



t How readily European cattle resume the wild habit, is shewn by the 

 following passage in Mr. S. Sydney's excellent work, ' The Three Colonies of 

 Australia' (1852), p. 314. "The cattle in bush re-acquire in many respects the 

 habits of their wild progenitors ; such is the habit of camping, and such, too, the 

 inanner in which, hke the wild [feral] cattle of Chillingham park in Northumber- 



