Species of Bovine Animals. 



6549 



and insufficiently described by Sir Stamford Raffles, may be, remains 

 still to be ascertained. 



A further notice of the gaour may yet be quoted from the pen of 

 Mr. Hodgson : — " The gaurs rut in winter and procreate in autumn, 

 producing usually but one young at a birth. The period of gestation 

 was in Nepaul always stated to me to exceed that of the common ox ; 

 but Mr. Elliot will not allow this.* The herds are ordinarily rather 

 numerous, twenty, thirty, forty, and sometimes even double these 

 numbers, being found together; but in the breeding-season, not above 

 ten or fifteen cows, with a single mature vigorous bull, who jealously 

 expels every young and old male from his harem. The sub-Himalayan 

 species entirely avoids the open tarai on the one hand, and the hills 

 on the other, adhering to the most solitary parts of the sal-forest, close 

 to and between the salient spurs of the hills, where the periodical 

 firing of the under-growth of the forest never reaches. In the Dukhun 

 these animals are said to penetrate into the hills in the hot weather — 

 very partially, I fancy, or else they must then lack cover on the plain, 

 for they are not a mountain race at all. They feed early and late in 

 the more open glades of the forest, posting sentinels the while, and 

 manifesting in their whole demeanour a degree of shyness unparalleled 

 among the bovines [unless by B. sondaicus]. They never venture, 

 even in the rains, when there is abundance of most rank vegetation to 

 cover their approaches, into the open tarai to depredate on the crops, 

 as the wild buffaloes constantly do ; nor do they ever associate or inter- 

 breed with the tame cattle, though immense numbers of the latter 

 every spring are driven into their retreats to feed, and rerhain there in 

 a half-wild condition for three or four months, when the wild buffaloes 

 frequently interbreed with the tame ones of their kind, of which, like- 

 wise, vast numbers are depastured there. Old males of the gaur are 

 often found solitarily wandering the forests they frequent, especially 

 in winter; but these have probably been recently expelled the herds 

 by their more vigorous juniors, and re-unite themselves with some herd 

 after the season of contention has passed. It is exceedingly difficult 

 to rear the Gauri Gau in confinement : nor did I ever know a successful 

 experiment, though the attempt has been, for fifty years past, constantly 

 made by the Court of Nepaul, which finds no difficulty in rearing wild 

 buffaloes and causing them to breed in confinement with the domestic 

 species, which is thus greatly improved in size and other qualities. 



* There would seem to be some mistake about the excessively slow breeding of the 

 gayal, one calf in three years only ! 



