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Show 1889.] MR. BLANFORD ON THE HIMALAYAN MARMOTS. 453 Mr. W. T. Blanford, F.Z.S., made the following remarks in reference to the Himalayan Marmots now living in the Society's Gardens:- " There are at present in the Gardens two Marmots from the Himalaya, said to have been obtained originally from Bhutan-one, a male, presented by Captain Greenstreet, the other, a female, by Sir Ashley Eden. " These Marmots have been identified with A. caudatus, Jacque-mont. This species was originally described from Kashmir, and has hitherto, so far as I am aware, only been obtained from the mountains north of the Kashmir valley. I have never yet seen a specimen from the Eastern Himalayas. It is a very rufous Marmot, of large size, with a tail more than half as long as the body and head together. " From the Eastern Himalayas the species hitherto procured are referred to A. himalayanus, Hodgson, A. robustus, A. Milne-Edwards (which is probably only a variety of A. himalayanus), and A. hema-chalanus, of Hodgson, the A. tibetanus of the British-Museum Catalogue, which, to avoid the use of two names intrinsically identical (himalayanus and hemachalanus) for two distinct species, I have, at Dr. Sclater's suggestion, recently proposed ('Scientific Results of the Second Yarkand Mission,' Mammalia, p. 35, note) to call after its discoverer, A. hodgsoni. I have given the synonymy of the different species with full references in a paper, ' On the Species of Marmot inhabiting the Himalaya, Tibet, and the adjoining regions ' (J. A. S. B. 1875, xliv. pt. ii. p. 113), and the greater portion is repeated in the account of the mammals collected by the second Yaikand Expedition quoted above. " I believe that the two animals in the Gardens belong to the smaller race A. hodgsoni (vel hemachalanus). A. himalayanus is a larger animal, paler and more yellowish grey in colour, with a proportionally shorter tail. The distinctions between the different species are given in the works already quoted. The present species has not, so far as I know, been figured; A. himalayanus and A. caudatus * are represented in plates xii. and xiii. of the Mammalia of the Second Yarkand Mission. "It is very singular that although I have now seen eight or nine specimens, living or dead, of A. hodgsoni, all had been in captivity ; 1 have never seen the skin of a wild example. The habitat I believe to be high elevations in the Eastern Himalayas proper, not Tibet. " The following is the synonymy of A. hodgsoni, taken chiefly from the paper already quoted on Himalayan Marmots : - "A. hemachalanus, Hodgson, J. A. S. B. 1843, xii. p. 410, nee A. himalayanus, Hodgs. ibid. 1841, x. p. 777. "A. tibetanus, Hodgs., Gray, Cat. M a m m . Birds Nepal, p. 14 1 A. caudatus is also figured in Jacquemont's ' Voyage dans l'Inde,' Atlas, vol. ii. pl. 5 (1844), and A. robustus in Messrs. H. and A. Milne-Edwards' 'Eecherches pour servir a l'Histoire naturelle des Mammiferes,' pl. xlvii. 1 30* |
