ut the one last mentioned frequently ascended a tree in my
garden, in search of ants, and this it effected by means of its hooked
feet, aided by an oblique grasp of the tail. The ants it seized by
extending its round and glutinous tongue along their tracks. In both,
the scales of the back were a cream-coloured white, with a tinge of red
in the specimen which came from Chilaw, probably acquired by the
insinuation of the Cabook dust which abounds along the western coast of
the island. Generally speaking, they were quiet during the day, and grew
restless as evening and night approached.

VI. RUMINATA. _The Gaur._--Besides the deer and some varieties of the
humped ox, which have been introduced from the opposite continent of
India, Ceylon has probably but one other indigenous _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 which he described 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: _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