bad harvest years often show a notable slip back to the old state. Visitors fresh from Europe occasionally ask in reference to this and other crimes, "What is the Government about, to permit such things?" It is impossible to condense the facts that would answer this kind of petulance

within a paragraph, but anybody can perceive that though it may be easy for a police to deal with occasional theft, it is hard to cope with cattle stealing tribes who have life-long experience, a firstrate organisation of wandering habit, and wide stretches of country in which to disappear.

There are several little jokes concealed in

scientific nomenclature. The absurd name Zebu now indelibly branded on the humped cow (Bos Sacer) of Africa and Asia is one of these. That noble naturalist M. Buffon once met some showmen going to a fair with a Brahminy bull and was told that its name, when it was at home, was "Zebu." There is a fine foreign touch in this word, as in that other showman's invention, the "Guyascutis," so the great man wrote it down, and scientific Europe, following his lead, has inscribed this fragment of a French showman's boniment so deeply on its august records that it cannot now be effaced. No such word is known in India, where "the cow" suffices for all needs. "Brahminy cow appears to be used by untravelled English folk, and, as distinguishing the true cow from the low caste buffalo, is the best name possible; if India is to be considered the chief home of humped cattle.

CHAPTER VII

OF BUFFALOES AND PIGS

"Dark children of the mere and marsh,
Wallow and waste and lea;

Outcast they wait at the village gate
With folk of low degree.

"Their pasture is in no man's land,
Their food the cattle's scorn;
Their rest is mire and their desire
The thicket and the thorn.

"But woe to those who break their sleep
And woe to those who dare

To rouse the herd-bull from his keep,
The wild boar from his lair."

R. K.

MANY Europeans speak of the Indian buffalo, which is the familiar buffalo of Egypt and Italy, as the "water buffalo," from its predilection for wallowing in swamps. "Yoke a buffalo and a bullock together and the buffalo will head towards the pool, the ox to the upland," says a proverb, but none the less this unequal yoke is often seen. Hindus of the old rock say a buffalo is unlucky to keep, the black antithesis of the benignant cow, a demon to an angel. angel. On going out in the morning it is an ill omen if the eye rests on

a buffalo, while the sight of a cow is good. The passion of the Hindu for bright colours, and his rooted hatred of black and dingy tones, are the groundwork of this aversion. Its uncouth shape as compared with the smooth outlines of the cow also counts in the buffalo's exclusion from bovine kinship. The vertebræ stand up on its crest like park palings, and the skeleton suggests paleontology as much as actual natural history, though the creature is an unmistakable cow. Not that the Hindu ever thought of generic relationships, for the rhinoceros, which is still more remote in kind, counts as a superior cow, and a vessel used in Shiv worship, representing the female energy, is reckoned of precious sanctity when made of rhinoceros horn. The Nilghai too, which is an antelope, is accounted a cow and equally honoured.

But though the Hindu may affect an academic scorn of the buffalo, he must confess that it is intrinsically a good beast, as gentle as the cow, more courageous and more affectionate, for it bears a better brain. Buffalo milk too is a most valuable food, rich and abundant. Most of the ghi eaten in the great cities is prepared from buffalo butter, and is now made on a large scale in remote districts and distributed by the railways. "The buffalo to the strong man's house, the horse to the Sultan's," is a saying indicating the estimate of the value of the milk of this animal. As a draught animal the buffalo has the fine qualities of willingness and great strength, suited for the strenuous toil

of the quarry and the timber-yard, but he bears the sun badly, and to thrive properly should have free access to a pool or mud swamp. "The tradesman to the city, the buffalo to the marsh," says the proverb. The roll of a horse or ass in sand or the pure luxury a tired man enjoys in a warm bath seem poor delights compared with the ineffable satisfaction of a herd of buffaloes in a water wallow. They roll and wriggle till the soft black mud encradles them and they are coated all over with a plaster that defies the mosquito, and for hours they will lie with only eyes and nostril twinkling above the surface in blissful content defying the heat of the sun. English farmers say, "Happy as pigs in muck;"-the beatitude of the buffalo in warm mud beats that homely figure by more than the buffalo beats the pig in size.

It is truly said that herds of buffaloes can defend themselves from the tiger, and they will also defend their herdsman, for they are capable of strong attachments, and have sense enough to combine. and form square to repel attack. In remote regions, where a European is seldom seen, they are occasionally inclined to resent his presence. There is something ignominious in a party of stalwart British sportsmen being treed by a herd of angry buffaloes, and obliged to wait for rescue at the hands of a tiny naked herdsman's child, but this has happened. Buffalo horns offer an example of the wondrous variety in unity of which