1866.] Notes and Queries. 75 



from the ablest downwards. I would enquire, therefore, through the 

 pages of this Journal, to what instances Dr. Gray can allude, as the 

 fact is certainly novel to those in India. The Governor of Rangoon, 

 at the time of the last war, I am told, had a pair of Gour sufficiently 

 tame to be yoked in a cart, but this is quite insufficient to establish 

 their claim to be viewed as semi-domesticated. In India, the difficulty 

 of rearing the calves is notorious. 



Again, immediately before the passage I have quoted above, Dr. 

 Gray remarks, " In the lower and warmer region of Central and South- 

 ern Asia, the Zebra has been completely domesticated." 



In the passage, Dr. Gray is alluding to wild species brought by 

 man into a state of domestication, and I confess to some curiosity as 

 to the wild stock of the domesticated Zebra. There is, I fancy, some 

 little confusion, however, in Dr. Gray's ideas here, as, on the previous 

 page, he tells us, " the oxen" " are never found truly wild." 



The distinction, too, which Dr. Gray draws (loc. cit.) between the 

 " truly domesticated' 11 animals, the ox, the sheep, the horse, the camel, 

 the dog and the cat, and the u semi-domesticated ," as the buffalo, the 

 goat, the pig, the rabbit, the reindeer, the yak &c, appears forced 

 and to a great extent imaginary. 



The distinction between these two classes of animals is more due to 

 the efforts of the Breeder than to mere domestication, and I should have 

 thought, that the highest triumphs of some of our rabbit fancies and of 

 our breeds of pigs merited quite as much as our " sheep" to be con- 

 sidered as " truly domesticated," if thereby is intended an unnatural 

 deviation from the wild stock, solely produced by the art of the 



Breeder. 



I cannot enter at greater length on this most interesting question, 



but I hope that some of the readers of this Journal who have perused 



Dr. Gray's report, will be able to furnish some explanation of the 



points indicated above. 



Another query I would ask is, to what race of Calotes mystaceus 



can Gunther refer to, when he states that " an old male measures 



nearly 24 inches, the tail taking 19 inches?" Now Calotes mystaceus 



is common in Birma, and more than a score have passed through my 



hands, but no specimen that I ever saw attained to even 12 inches of 



total length ! 



