302 On the Flat-liorned Taurine Cattle of S. E. Asia. [No. 3, 



fonnd wild in the Siamese forests, and exists very generally in the 

 domestic state, particularly in the Southern provinces. Those we 

 saw about the capital were short-limbed, compactly made, and often 

 without horns, being never of the white or grey colour so prevalent 

 among the cattle of Hinclustán. They also want the hump on the 

 shoulders which characterises the latter. They are used only in 

 agricultural labonr, and the slaughter of them, publicly at least, is 

 forbidden even to strangers. Henee, during our stay, our servants 

 were obliged to go three or four miles out of town, and to slaughter 

 the animáis at night. The wild cattle, for the protection of religión 

 does not extend to them, are shot by professed hunters, on account 

 of their hides, horns, bones, and flesh, which last, con verted into jerked 

 beef, forms an article of commerce with China."* Are clomesticated 

 Bantengs here intended ? The existence of hornless individuáis is 



* ' Mission to Siam and Cochin China,' p. 430. 



The people of Laos " have a great raany cattle, very small, which yield scarcely 

 any milk, and which they never think of using. When we told them that iri 

 our country the milk of the cow was much esteemed, and that it formed a 

 savoury food, they lau^hed, and only held our countrymen in contempt." 

 (Grandjean, in the Chinese Repository', as quoted by Sir .1. Bowring). This 

 prejudice against the milk of the cow seems to be common to all the Indo- 

 Chinese nations, and prevails also in China, whilst the Mantchurian Tartars are 

 great consumers of milk. Even the savages of the Naga hills, bordering on 

 Asám, reject milk as food, in the belief that it is of excrementitious nature. 



In Eavl's ' Voyage to the Molucca Islands and New Guinea' (p. 361), we are 

 informed that "Wild cattle are numerous in Timor Laut, of a brown colour, 

 and size about the same as that of two-year oíd cattle in Holland. The native3 

 catch them with rattan, and also shoot them with arrows." 



The Tamarao of the island of Mindoro (one of the Philippines), as I was 

 informed by Mr. Hugh Cuming, is a small bovine species, but fierce and dan- 

 gerous to attack, of a dark colour, with horns rising at an angle of about 45° 

 from the forehead." The nearly similar ñame Tambadao is applied in Borneo to 

 the Banteng. 



These various wild races and humpless tame races of S. E. Asia and its archi- 

 pelago demand investigation ; and though I have before published in the So- 

 ciety's Journal several of the notices here cited, it is convenient to bring them 

 together, to save trouble in reference. What animal the following passage refers 

 to, in Mrs. Graham's work in Ceylon, I am unable even to conjecture ; and cer- 

 tainly do not creclit the existence of such a creature. At the Governor's house, 

 tliis lady " saw, feeding by himself, an animal no less beautiful than terrible, — 

 the wild bull, whose milk-white hiele is auorned with a black flowing mane !" 

 The description is explicit enough, so far as it goes, but most assuredly no such 

 animal is known to naturalists ; and with the example before us, of what a 

 writer of Bishop Heber's stamp can make of the Gayál, we may cease to wonder 

 at any amount of vagary of the kind on the part of unscientiíic observers ; 

 though why people of education, who undertake to describe or notice an 

 animal, howevcr cursorily, should make such sorry use of their eyes is difficuit 

 to comprehend. 



