cases, by insinuating
itself under them, between the supports, by which it is customary in
Ceylon to raise trunks a few inches above the floor, in order to prevent
the attacks of white ants.

VI. RUMINANTIA. _The Gaur_.--Besides the deer, and some varieties of the
humped ox, that have been introduced from the opposite continent of
India, Ceylon has probably but one other indigenous bovine _ruminant_,
the buffalo.[1] There is a tradition that the gaur, found in the
extremity of the Indian peninsula, was at one period a native of the
Kandyan Mountains; but as Knox speaks of one which in his time "was kept
among the king's creatures" at Kandy[2], and his account of it tallies
with that of the _Bos Gaurus_ of Hindustan, it would appear even then to
have been a rarity. A place between Neuera-ellia and Adam's Peak bears
the name of "Gowra-ellia," and it is not impossible that the animal may
yet be discovered in some of the imperfectly explored regions of the
island.[3] I have heard of an instance in which a very old Kandyan,
residing in the mountains near the Horton Plains, asserted that when
young he had seen what he believed to have been a gaur, and he described
it as between an elk and a buffalo in size, dark brown in colour, and
very scantily provided with hair.

[Footnote 1: Bubalus buffelus, _Gray_.]

[Footnote 2: KNOX, _Historical Relation of Ceylon, &c._, A.D. 1681. Book
i. c. 6.]

[Footnote 3: KELAART, _Fauna Zeylan_., p. 87.]

_Oxen_.--Oxen are used by the peasantry both in ploughing and in
tempering the mud in the wet paddi fields before sowing the rice; and
when the harvest is reaped they "tread out the corn," after the
immemorial custom of the East. The wealth of the native chiefs and
landed proprietors frequently consists in their herds of bullocks, which
they hire out to their dependents during the seasons for agricultural
labour; and as they already supply them with land to be tilled, and lend
the seed which is to crop it, the further contribution of this portion
of the labour serves to render the dependence of the peasantry on the
chiefs and headmen complete.

The cows are often worked as well as the oxen; and as the calves are
always permitted to suck them, milk is an article which the traveller
can rarely hope to procure in a Kandyan village. From their constant
exposure at all seasons, the cattle in Ceylon, both those employed in
agriculture and those on the roads, are subject to devastating murrain