EXISTING KINDS OF WILD CATTLE 225 
although fawn or dun-coloured buffaloes occur in 
Assam. The latter have been regarded as representing 
a distinct race, although it seems more probable that 
they are merely individual variations. A fine bull 
buffalo will stand about 6 feet, or perhaps rather 
more at the shoulder. The maximum dimensions 
attained by the horns are noticed later. 
The home of the wild buffalo is in the tall jungles 
of elephant-grass in various parts of India and 
Ceylon, in which these gigantic animals are as 
completely hidden as are rabbits in an English 
meadow of standing grass. From many parts of 
India buffaloes have been more or less completely 
exterminated, but they are still abundant in Assam, 
and the adjacent state of Cooch-Behar. Wild 
buffaloes likewise occur in the jungles of portions of 
Burma and the Malay Peninsula, but whether these 
are aboriginally wild, or the descendants of domesti- 
cated herds which have run wild, is uncertain. In 
earlier times the species ranged much farther to the 
westward than is the case at the present day ; and 
there is evidence, as mentioned in Chapter IX, that 
it once extended through Persia into Mesopotamia.^ 
In Assam there are two distinct types of the 
Indian buffalo — one characterised by the subcircular 
or lunate sweep of the horns, and the other by the 
horizontally outward extension of these appendages, 
which are directed upwards only at their extremi- 
ties, and attain enormous dimensions in old bulls. 
Buffaloes with horns of the circular type are the 
common form, and occur in Cooch-Behar and other 
parts of India ; but those of the straight-horned 
breed are definitely known in India only from Assam. 
1 Supra, p. 181. 
15 
