Part 88 (1/2)

NO. 463. TETRACEROS QUADRICORNIS.

_The Four-horned Antelope_ (_Jerdon's No. 227_).

NATIVE NAMES.--_Chowsingha_, _Chowka_. Jerdon also gives _Bherki_, _Bekra_, and _Jangli-bakra_, but I have also heard these names given by natives to the rib-faced deer (_Cervulus aureus_); _Bhir-kura_ (the male) and _Bhir_(female) Gondi; _Bhirul_ of Bheels; _Kotri_, Bustar; _Kond-guri_, Canarese; _Konda-gori_, Telegu (_Jerdon_).

Kinloch also gives _Doda_, Hindi.

HABITAT.--Throughout India, but not in Ceylon or Burmah.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Tetraceros quadricornis_.]

DESCRIPTION.--A small brownish-bay animal, slightly higher at the croup than at the shoulder, which gives it a poky look, lighter beneath and whitish inside the limbs and in the middle of the belly; fore-legs, muzzle, and edge of ears dark; fetlocks dark, sometimes ringed with lighter colour. The colouring varies a good deal. The horns are situated as I have before described; the anterior ones are subject to much variation; sometimes they are absent or represented merely by a black callous skin; others are merely little k.n.o.bs; the largest seldom exceed an inch and a-half, and the posterior horns five inches.

SIZE.--Head and body, 40 to 42 inches; height at shoulder, 24 to 26 inches; at croup a little higher.

This little antelope, the smallest of Indian hollow-horned ruminants, is very shy and difficult to get, even in jungles where it abounds.

It was plentiful in the Seonee district, yet I seldom came across it, and was long before I secured a pair of live ones for my collection.

It frequents, according to my experience, bamboo jungle; but, according to Kinloch, Jerdon and other writers, it is found in jungly hills and open glades, in the forests, and in bushy ground near dense forests.

It is an awkward-looking creature in action, as it runs with its neck stuck out in a poky sort of way, making short leaps; in walking it trips along on the tips of its toes like the little mouse-deer (_Meminna_). The young are stated to be born in the cold season.

General Hardwicke created great confusion for a time by applying the name _chikara_, which is that of the _Gazella Bennetti_, to this species. It is not good eating, but can be improved by being well larded with mutton fat when roasted. McMaster believes in the individuality of Elliot's antelope (_T. sub-quadricornutus_), but more evidence is required before it can be separated from _quadricornis_. The mere variation in size, or the presence or absence of the anterior horns and the lighter shade of colour, are not sufficient reasons for its separation as a species, for the _quadricornis_ is subject to variation in like manner.[39]

[Footnote 39: See notes in Appendix C.]

BOVINAE--CATTLE.

These comprise the oxen, and wind up the hollow-horned ruminants as far as India is concerned. There are in the New World some other very interesting animals of this group, such as the musk-ox (_Ovibos_), and the p.r.o.ng-horned antelope (_Antilocapra_), which last so far resembles the Cervidae that the horns, which are bifurcate, are also annually shed. They come off the bony core, on which the new horn is already beginning to form.

The Bovines are animals of large size, horned in both s.e.xes, a very large and broad moist m.u.f.fle, ma.s.sive bodies and stout legs. The horns, which are laterally wide spread, are supported on cores of cellular bone, and are cylindrical or depressed at the base. The nose broad, with the nostrils at the side. The skull has no sub-orbital pit or fissure, and the bony orbit is prominent; grinders with a well-developed supplementary lobe; cannon bone short. In India, the groups into which this sub-family may be divided, are oxen, the buffaloes, and the yaks. There are no true bison in our limits, the commonly so-called bison being properly a wild ox. The taurine or Ox group is divided into the _Zebus_, or humped domestic cattle; _Taurus_, humpless cattle with cylindrical horns; and _Gavaeus_, humpless cattle with flattened horns.

According to Dr. Jerdon, in some parts of India small herds of zebus have run wild. He says:--

”Localities are recorded in Mysore, Oude, Rohilkund, Shahabad, &c., and I have lately seen and shot one in the Doab near Mozuffernugger.

These, however, have only been wild for a few years. Near Nellore, in the Carnatic, on the sea-coast there is a herd of cattle that have been wild for many years. The country they frequent is much covered with jungle and intersected with salt-water creeks and back-waters, and the cattle are as wild and wary as the most feral species. Their horns were very long and upright, and they were of large size. I shot one there in 1843, but had great difficulty in stalking it, and had to follow it across one or two creeks.”

_GENUS GAVAEUS_.

Ma.s.sive head with large concave frontals, surmounted in _G. gaurus_ by a ridge or crest of bone; horns flattened on the outer surface, corrugated at the base, and smooth for the rest of the two-thirds, or a little more; wide-spreading and recurved at the tips, forming a crescent; greenish grey for the basal half, darker towards the tips, which are black; m.u.f.fle small; dewlap small or absent; the spinous processes of the dorsal vertebrae are greatly developed down to about half the length of the back; legs small under the knee, and white in colour; hoofs small and pointed, leaving a deer-like print in the soil, very different to the splay foot of the buffalo.

NO. 464. GAVAEUS GAURUS.

_The Gaur, popularly called Bison_ (_Jerdon's No. 238_).

NATIVE NAMES.--_Gaor_ or _Gaori-gai_, _Bun-boda_, Hindi; _Boda_ and _Bunparra_ in the Seonee and Mandla districts; _Pera-maoo_ of Southern Gonds; _Gaoiya_, Mahrathi; _Karkona_, Canarese; _Katuyeni_, Tamil; _Jangli-kulgha_ in Southern India; _Pyoung_ in Burmah; _Salandang_ in the Malay countries. Horsfield gives the following names under his _Bibos a.s.seel_: _As'l Gayal_, Hindi; _Seloi_, Kuki; _P'hanj_ of the Mughs and Burmese, and some others which he considers doubtful.

HABITAT.--Regarding this, I quote at length from Jerdon, whose inquiries were carefully made. He says: ”The gaur is an inhabitant of all the large forests of India, from near Cape Comorin to the foot of the Himalayas. On the west coast of India it is abundant all along the Syhadr range on Western Ghats, both in the forests at the foot of the hills, but more especially in the upland forests and the wooded country beyond the crest of the Ghats. The Animally hills, the Neilgherries, Wynaad, Coorg, the Bababooden hills, the Mahableshwar hills, are all favourite haunts of this fine animal. North of this, it occurs to my own knowledge in the jungles on the Taptee river and the neighbourhood, and north of the Nerbudda; a few on the deeper recesses of the Vindhian mountains. On the eastern side of the peninsula it is found in the Pulney and Dindigul hills, the Shandamungalum range, the Shervaroys, and some of the hill ranges near Vellore and the borders of Mysore. North of this, the forest being too scanty, it does not occur till the Kistna and G.o.davery rivers; and hence it is to be found in suitable spots all along the range of Eastern Ghats to near Cuttack and Midnapore, extending west far into Central India, and northwards towards the edge of the great plateau which terminates south of the Gangetic valley. According to Hodgson it also occurs in the Himalayan Terai, probably however only towards the eastern portion, and here it is rare, for I have spoken to many sportsmen who have hunted in various parts of the Terai, from Sikhim to Rohilkund, and none have ever come across the gaur at the foot of the Himalayas.”--'Mam. of Ind.,' p. 303. (See also Appendix C.)

In the Central provinces the gaur is found in several parts of the bamboo-clad spurs of the Satpura range. My experience of the animal is limited to the Seonee district, where it is restricted to the now closely preserved forests of Sonawani in the south-east bend of the range, and a few are to be seen across occasionally, near the old fort of Amodagarh, on the Hirri river.

It is also more abundant on the Pachmari and Mahadeo hills. On the east of the Bay of Bengal it is found from Chittagong through Burmah to the Malayan peninsula. It was considered that the gaur of the eastern countries was a distinct species, and is so noted in Horsfield's Catalogue, and described at some length under the name of _Bibos a.s.seel_; but it appears that all this distinction was founded on the single skull of a female gaur, and is an instance of the p.r.o.neness of naturalists to create new species on insufficient data. He himself remarks that when the skin was removed it was evident that the animal was nearly related to _Gavaeus gaurus_, or, as he calls it, _Bibos cavifrons_. Mr. G. P. Sanderson shot a fine old male of what he supposed to be the wild _gayal_, and he says: ”I can state that there was not one single point of difference in appearance or size between it and the bison of Southern India, except that the horns were somewhat smaller than what would have been looked for in a bull of its age in Southern India;” and this point was doubtless an individual peculiarity, for Blyth, in his 'Catalogue of the Mammals of Burmah,' says: ”Nowhere does this grand species attain a finer development than in Burmah, and the horns are mostly short and thick, and very ma.s.sive as compared with those of the Indian gaurs, though the distinction is not constant on either side of the Bay of Bengal.”

Jerdon supposes it to have existed in Ceylon till within the present century, but I do not know on what data he founds his a.s.sertion.