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Show 1887.] MR. A. O. HUME ON BUDORCAS TAXICOLOR. 485 The pair figured (and I have seen one larger) measure (along the curve outside from base to tip) :-Length 12*5; basal girth 9*25 ; spread 12 ; and have their bases 2 inches apart. They are actually larger horns than some of the other (supposed adult) form. Is Blyth likely to have been mistaken ? At the time he wrote no one knew anything of the beast ; to this day no European, in this part of the world at any rate, has shot it. All he had to go on were the rough skins brought down by the Mishmees. I have examined over a dozen such, and not one has left on it any trace of the sex of the animal to which it belonged. Either he guessed, judging by the analogy of the Serow, in which the horns of both sexes are very similar, or he was misinformed by those who sent the skin down. But about Mr. Milne Edwards 1 He figures as an adult male of this species an animal with horns of our No. 3 type, and which, if the species he deals with be really the same as ours, must belong to the young, if Blyth is right, or to a female, if I am correct. But I attach less weight to this, because, on plate 68 of the same volume, he figures also as a male what, judging from the horns, must, I think, be an old female of the Bharal (Ocis nahoor *). But is his species of Gnu-goat the same as ours ? Certainly not, if his plate be reliable. I have examined 13 skins of animals of different ages, and exhibiting all three types of horns, and in not one was the head coloured as he figured it. In his figure the entire face and cheeks and sides of the head are a light yellow dun, only on the nose is a strongly contrasting black patch. In our Mishmee Hills Gnu-goat, the entire face, cheeks, sides of head, chin, and throat are black or blackish, only just at the base of the horns is a little brownish hair intermingled, or in one or two cases a small dark brownish patch appears. I have found many horns intermediate between 1 and 2, but not one in any degree intermediate between 2 and 3. I believe that there is no doubt, despite anything previously written anywhere to the contrary, that my first figure represents the horns of an adult, but not very large, male, m y second those of a younger, but not very young, male, and m y third those of a fine old female. It is worthy of note that, to judge from the skins, this latter was a very much smaller animal than others with horns (of certainly, I should say, no greater cubic contents) of the other type, and this is exactly what we should expect in the case of females and males of this group. Of course the animal might grow ; but it is physically impossible, it seems to me, for horns of the No. 3 type to grow into smaller and wholly different-shaped horns of the No. 2 type. Whether at an earlier stage the horns of the male and female resemble each other more closely, and what the horns of the male in its earliest stages are like, m y present materials do not enable me to decide but I soon hope to have a complete series. The smallest 1 That is if the animal figured really be 0. nahoor; but it must be admitted that I have never seen any male horns of this species at all like the plate, and no female horns so thick and large. |