248 THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
is actually the case ; and it seems probable that 
many of the cattle of the Punjab are of this hybrid 
derivation, while Dr. W. T. Blanford ^ has suggested 
that the same holds good for those of eastern Persia. 
In the Punjab many of these presumed hybrids have 
lost the hump, although retaining the white ring 
round the fetlock characteristic of the zebu. 
At Stellingen, near Hamburg, Mr. Carl Hagenbeck ^ 
has recently started a farm for breeding hybrids 
between European and humped cattle. One of the 
objects of this experiment is to produce a breed 
which shall be immune — as the zebu itself is said to 
be — to zymotic epidemic diseases, such as rinderpest. 
Another is to produce cattle of great stature and 
weight ; and to effect this, very large zebu bulls are 
crossed with unusually big European cows. The 
opposite cross has apparently not yet been attempted. 
The steers, at any rate of the hybrids hitherto pro- 
duced, are strikingly like their male parents, having 
well-developed humps, large pendent ears, and more or 
less white in the neighbourhood of the fetlocks. This 
indicates that the elimination of the hump in ancient 
Egyptian cattle, to which reference has been made in 
a previous chapter, must have been a long and slow 
process. The continuation of the Stellingen experi- 
ment and its results will be watched with interest. 
The zebu is likewise nearly related to the gayal 
of north-eastern India, which, as pointed out in an 
earlier part of the present work, is probably a domes- 
ticated derivative of the gaur ; and it is therefore 
natural to suppose that these two should freely inter- 
breed. A female hybrid of this nature was born in 
^ Eastern Persia^ London, 1876, vol. ii, p. 96. 
^ See La Nature, Paris, vol. xxx. pp. iii, 112, 191 1. 
