OTHER DOMESTICATED CATTLE 175 
Bay of Bengal, and locally known either as the 
gayal or the mithan. Gayal are large, heavily built 
animals resembling the bantin in their white legs, 
and the presence of a distinct ridge on the withers, 
but without a white rump-patch, and with the 
general colour dark in both sexes ; while they are 
further distinguished by the shape of the head and 
horns, the heavier build, shorter legs, and the great 
development of the dewlap. Their nearest relative 
is, however, the gaur or seladang {Bos gaurus) of 
the Indo-Malay countries, to which fuller reference 
is made in the next chapter ; and the point at issue 
is whether gayal represent a distinct wild species, 
or whether they are merely a domesticated derivative 
from that species. 
Compared with the wild Indian gaur, the gayal 
is a smaller and more heavily built animal, with 
a very large dewlap, a somewhat less prominent and 
conspicuous dorsal ridge, and a shorter and wider 
head, crowned with a pair of widely separated black 
conical horns, directed mainly outwards, and the 
vertex of the skull between the bases of the horns 
forming a nearly straight line, instead of rising into 
a high and forwardly-directed arch. The forehead 
is quite flat. In colour the gayal is normally a 
somewhat darker animal than the gaur, the tint of 
the hair, apart from the white of the lower portions 
of the limbs, being blackish with a tinge of olive. 
In some gaur from the districts at the northern 
end of the Bay of Bengal the form of the skull 
approximates in some degree to that of the gayal ; 
and this approximation is still more marked in the 
seladang, or Malay race of the gaur, in some in- 
dividuals of which the ridge between the horns is 
