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Show 4 64 MR. C. G. DANFORD ON THE [June 1, necessary to mention this, as both Fitzinger (Sitzungsb. d. k. Akad. Wien, xxxvi. p. 471) and Blasius (Saugeth. Deutsch. p. 485) say, " both sexes carry a strong beard." Its size, Herr Kotschy remarks (Reise in cil. Tau. p. 441), "exceeds in every respect that of the European Ibex ; and it attains not unfrequently a length of 6^ feet." This is quite likely to be correct, as a male of six years measured by myself was 5 feet 5^ inches from nose to tip of tail, and stood 2 feet 9^ inches at the shoulder; while a female of the same age was 4 feet long, and 2 feet 3 inches at the shoulder. The development of the horn takes place, as has been shown, in the first year, and progresses in well-marked annual growths, the sizes of which are naturally regulated by the robustness of the animal and the supply of food. The yearly growths seem to be greatest from the third to the sixth year, the subsequent additions being successively smaller. The first well-developed knob may be generally taken to denote the termination of the third year. The greatest age attained in the present series seems to be (by the showing of these divisions) twelve years; but this is not the maximum, as Herr Kotschy mentions that "two splendid pairs of fifteen-year old Ibex were brought to him" (Reise in cil. Tau. p. 244). The specimens now exhibited form part of a series of twenty-two pairs, eight of which I obtained from animals in the flesh. The finest head is that of a twelve-year old, and has the following measurements:-Superior curve 47^ inches, chord 22A spread 2, basal circumference 9f, weight 10^ lbs. The greatest length which I find recorded is that in a living specimen possessed by Mr. Hutton, which had horns 404/ inches. A specimen in the St.-Petersburg Museum was 40 inches, and another 39 inches. The latter had the great girth of 12 inches (Teh. Asie Min. vol. ii. p. 679). There is, however, in the British Museum the horn of a twelve-year old, which measures 48^ inches on the curve; and even this I do not believe to be by any means the greatest length attained, having often been told by the native sportsmen of the Taurus that they had seen horns of six and seven spans, which, taking the largest pair before us roughly at 5\ spans, would give the enormous length of 5 feet. The spread of the horns varies much in the male; but the direction of the points in specimens from the Caucasus and Asia Minor is almost invariably inward. When exhibiting some horns of Capra cegagrus from Shiraz and Ispahan in Persia, Mr. Blanford remarked that they did not curve so much inward as those figured by Blasius in his " Wirbelthiere Euro-pa's " (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1874, p. 248); and in some pairs, said to have come from Sind, which I examined, the direction of the points was decidedly outward ; and Mr. Hutton's Afghanistan head had a width of 22-f- inches. In the present series the horns in one case absolutely cross (fig. 1, p. 466), in another they meet, and all curve inwards with one exception. This latter specimen (fig. 2, p. 466), killed thirty years ago on the Mountain of Chander in the Solyman range, is further remarkable in that, though only the head of an eight-year |