A herdsman was once seized
by a man-eater one afternoon a few hundred yards from my tent. His
cows fled, but his buffalos, hearing his cries, rushed up and saved
him.

The attachment evinced by these uncouth creatures to their keepers
was once strongly brought to my notice in the Mutiny. In beating up
the broken forces of a rebel Thakoor, whom we had defeated the
previous day, I, with a few troopers, ran some of them to bay in a
rocky ravine. Amongst them was a Brahmin who had a buffalo cow. This
creature followed her master, who was with us as a prisoner, for the
whole day, keeping at a distance from the troops, but within call
of her owner's voice. When we made a short halt in the afternoon,
the man offered to give us some milk; she came to his call at once,
and we had a grateful draught, the more welcome as we had had nothing
to eat since the previous night. That buffalo saved her master's life,
for when in the evening the prisoners were brought up to court martial
and sentenced to be hanged, extenuating circumstances were urged for
our friend with the buffalo, and he was allowed to go, as I could
testify he had not been found with arms in his hands; and I had the
greatest pleasure in telling him to be off, and have nothing more
to do with rebel Thakoors. Jerdon says the milk of the buffalo is
richer than that of the cow. I doubt this. I know that in rearing
wild animals buffalos' milk is better than cows' milk, which is far
too rich, and requires plentiful dilution with water.

There is a very curious little animal allied to the buffalo, of which
we have, or have had, a specimen in the Zoological Gardens at
Alipore--the _Anoa depressicornis_; it comes from the Island of
Celebes, and seems to link the buffalo with the deer. It is black,
with short wavy hair.

* * * * *

Before passing on to the true Cervidae I must here place an animal
commonly called a deer, and generally classed as such--the musk-deer
according to some naturalists. There is no reason, save an
insufficient one, that this creature should be so called and classed,
there being much evidence in favour of its alliance to the antelopes.
In the first place it has a gall bladder, which the Cervidae have
not, with the exception, according to Dr. Crisp, of the axis ('P.
Z. S.'). On the other hand it has large canine tusks like the muntjacs,
deerlets, and water-deer, and, as these are all aberrant forms of
the true Cervidae