From a native I learn that in a recent beat in Rajpootana (somewhere on the neighbourhood of Kota), no less than 10 lions were turned out. If this story be true, and I think I have heard of similar large gatherings amongst African lions, this animal occasionally collects in much larger numbers than tigers do. At the same time I do not place much faith in the story. The largest number of tigers of which I ever heard as being found together was six. These were full grown animals. Five I have several times heard of. one family, the old tiger and tigress and their A tigress not unfrequently has 3 or 4 cubs (I have known the latter number of fæti to be taken from the body of a slain animal) but they rarely, I suspect, all attain to muturity.

In such cases all are full grown progeny.

The lion seems still to exist in 3 isolated parts of Central and Western India, omitting its occasional occurrence in Bundelkund. These are (1) from near Gwalior to Kotah. (2) Around Deesa and mount Aboo, and thence southwards nearly to Ahmedabad and (3) in part of Kattiawar, in the jungles known as the Gheer. It is possible that isolated examples may yet remain in others of its original haunts.

I may add that the opinion expressed by Mr. Blyth (Cat. Mam. in Mus. As. Soc.) of the inferiority in size of the lion to the tiger is quite borne out by all I have heard on the subject. Major Baigire, one of the best known tiger hunters of Western India, who has also killed more than one lion, told me that the muscular development of the latter animal, as displayed in the skinned carcase, is decidedly less than that of the former.

2. The hunting leopard, Felis (cynalurus) jubatus. Blyth, in his catalogue, gives the range of this animal in India as confined to the west and south. It is found throughout the greater portion if not the whole of the Central Provinces, though everywhere scarce, and I have seen the skin of a specimen killed near Deogurh in the Sonthal pergunnahs, and brought to that station by a shikaree. I think it will be found to exist, here and there, almost throughout the Peninsula. In Cutch it is said to be the only large feline existing, but I cannot speak positively on this subject.

3. The wild dog. Cuon rutilans, Pallas.

The ordinary prey of these animals, who, as is well known, hunt in packs, is the sámbar (Rusa Aristotelis, Cuv.), the chital or spotted

deer (axis maculatus Gray), and the wild pig. But they attack higher game. I have heard a perfectly authenticated account of their destroying a young gaur (Bos gaurus), and I myself found the fresh carcase of a full grown (tame) buffalo which had been killed by them. This was in the jungles east of Baroda. Now a buffalo is not an easy beast to kill; very few tigers will attack an adult. It struck me that the teeth of a wild dog would scarcely suffice to tear the enormously thick skin of the throat of their prey and on examining the carcase I found scarcely the mark of a tooth on the neck and throat, although there were many about the muzzle. The animal had evidently been killed by tearing out its intestines, a portion of the pack meantime holding the animal by hanging on, in bull dog style, to his muzzle and forequarters. I suspect that they kill all large animals in the same way; a young sambur, which I saw on the Nilgiris, had apparently been killed in this manner. I have heard from natives, too, that this is their mode of attacking tigers. That they do attack and kill tigers is so universally stated in India, in every place where the wild dog is found, from the Himalayas to the extreme south, that I do not think its truth can be doubted, startling as the assertion appears. Yet, singularly enough, they never attack men at least I never heard of their doing so. The wolf, which, although larger, is proportionately their inferior in strength and speed, and which rarely, and in India, I think, never, collects into packs as large as those of Cuon rutilans, not unfrequently attacks men, though I believe he rarely attacks an animal of the size of a full grown sambur.

RUMINANTIA.

4. The gaur and gayal. Bos gaurus, Smith, and Bos pontalis, Lambert. I had the unusual advantage last year, and at an interval of 2 months, of seeing five adult examples of both these magnificent bovine species alive. The gaur were wild in the jungles of Nimar, the gayals were the magnificent tame specimens procured by Dr. J. Anderson for the Zoological Society, and living for some time in the Botanical gardens at Calcutta. There could be little question of the purity of breed of the latter; although far more tame and gentle than most domestic cattle, their symmetry and the regularity of their colouring were those of wild animals.

There is, at the first sight, a remarkable resemblance between these two races. The massive proportions, thick horns, short legs, immense

depth of body, the dorsal ridge terminating abruptly about half way down the back, the general colouring, are all characters common to both. But one or two differences are immediately perceived, and others become conspicuous on closer examination. The most remarkable of course are the comparatively straight and wide-spreading horns and the enormously developed dewlap of the gayal, as contrasted with the sharply curved horns and absence of any dewlap in the gaur, and the shorter tail of the former. But if Dr. Anderson's specimens are fair examples of the gayal, they shew that there are several minor distinctions between the two. In the gayals the head is shorter and, I think, altogether smaller than in the gaur, and the dorsal ridge is not quite so high. In the adult bull gayal in Calcutta, the skin of the back and sides is almost naked, as in the buffaloes of the plains of India; this I have never seen in the gaur. The legs below the knees too, which in the gaur are dirty white, are, in these gayals, dirty yellow. The female gayal is darker in colour than the cow gaurs which I have seen, but as the latter vary considerably in tint, the former may possibly do the same.

I have seen a good deal of the gaur in the Satpoora hills during the last few years. It there inhabits the peculiar thin jungles which cover the trap rocks of Central and Western India. These jungles, as is well known, consist of tolerably open spaces of thick grass 3 to 5 feet in height, with small scattered trees. This grass is burnt at the end of the cold weather over the greater portion of the country. In ravines and along the. banks of streams the jungle is thicker, but elsewhere there are few places where the trees are an impediment to riding. The gaur feeds in these plains in the morning and evening, drinking in the evening, or at night, and retreating during the day either to a shady ravine, or, during the hot weather, at least, to the top of a high hill, the most breezy spot being apparently chosen, irrespective of shade. So far as I have observed, the gaur, like the sámbur, never remains in the vicinity of water, or drinks, during the heat of the day.*

The ferocity of the gaur has been, I think, greatly overstated. I have never heard of but one well authenticated instance of an unwounded animal attacking man, though the bulls, like those of all

* The spotted deer, on the other hand, almost invariably does so. The sám. burs, I believe, only drink at night,

large bovines, are undoubtedly dangerous in the rutting season. In general, the gaur is a timid and rather stupid animal, not very sharp of sight, though, like all ruminants and, indeed, all wild mammals, gifted with strong powers of scent.

I have never seen a herd of more than 16, and ten to twelve is a more common number, the herd comprising one or two adult bulls only, the remainder being cows and calves. The bulls remain apart;

seen.

But I have heard both

either solitary, or in parties of two or three. from Europeans and natives of much larger gatherings having been These are doubtless formed by the union of many herds, and this habit of collecting, at particular seasons, in very large numbers, appears common to most ruminants which habitually live in herds. Thus I have seen, in April, at least 150 spotted deer (Axis maculatus) together, and I have heard of far larger numbers collecting in the hot season, and I have recently heard of similar assemblages of the bárasingha (Rucervus Duvaucellii).

The cows of the gaur, as I have already mentioned, vary considerably in colour, being usually some shade of brown, approaching dun. Some, in Nimar and the Satpoora hills at all events, are of a very red tinge, in some cases approaching closely to the deep red so common in European cattle,-the colour also, I believe, of the cow Banting, Bos sondaicus. I am inclined to think that the colour is redder in the cold season than in the hot weather. The usual tinge in the hot season at least is a much duller brown, nearly the colour of the Nilgiri buffaloes. From what I have heard, the tint of these Nimar animals may be lighter than that of the cows in the Western Ghats and southern India, a circumstance probably connected with the much greater exposure to the sun which they must undergo in the thin trap jungles, and also partly, perhaps, accounted for by that tendency which appears to exist in most wild animals to approximate, in their colour, the general hue of their habitat. This is, of course, much lighter in a tract mainly covered by grass, which is dried and of the colour of straw for 7 months of the year, than in the depth of the evergreen forests of Malabar and the Western Ghats.

The size of the gaur, great as it is, is often, I suspect, exaggerated by unfair measurement. Instead of measuring the true height, as is done with horses, the length from the forefoot to the end of the spinal

ridge is substituted. A great addition to the height is also easily made by pulling out the foreleg as the animal lies, and by measuring from the toe instead of from the heel, especially if the cord be curved a little over the side. Another plan I have lately heard of is to stretch a tape from one forefoot to the other over the back, and to take half the resulting length as the height. When it is remembered that the measurements are made by sportsmen, not by naturalists, it will easily be understood that all should be taken cum grano and that many may be rejected altogether. My own impression is that it is as rare to find a gaur exceeding about 17 hands (5 ft. 10 in.) as it is to meet with a tiger above 10 feet in length. Larger animals do undoubtedly exist, but they are rare, and it is, I think, doubtful if 20 hands (6 ft. 8 in.) is ever reached. To judge from all the horns I have seen, the gaur of no part of India proper attains a larger size than in the Sat poora hills.

The gaur is called ran pado in Goozerat and ran hila by the Bheels of Kandesh, both words, like the name commonly used throughout Central and Southern India, ran or jungli byns, meaning wild buffalo, which is just as absurd, as the term bison applied by Anglo-Indians. I have even heard the name arna, which of course means the wild buffalo, applied to the gaur; and the correct name is rarely used, in Central India at least, except in the neighbourhood of districts where wild buffaloes occur.

5. The wild buffalo, Bos (Bubalus) buffelus.

I think Blyth is in error in restricting the range of the aboriginally wild buffalo to the Ganges valley and Assam. (Cat. Mam. As. Soc. p. 163). Wild buffaloes are completely unknown throughout Western and Southern India, but they are common on the east coast, to some distance south of Cuttack at least, and throughout the jungles of Mandla, Raipur and Sumbalpúr, extending west as far as the Wein a Gunga and Pranhita, and south to the Godavery; a few herds may occur beyond these limits, but they are very rare. My information is derived partly from my own observation, partly from various sportsmen who have seen and killed the animal in these districts; and I have myself seen the spoils. All that I have seen belong to the B. speiroceros race of Hodgson, with horns curving from the base. My reasons for thinking all these animals aboriginally wild, and and not feral, are1st, the perfect symmetry and immense size of their horns.

2nd, the