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Show J 890.] MR. LYDEKKER O N A N ANTLER FROM ASIA MINOR. 363 hearing of the Arabs and their goats, and as they cannot get away they have developed the art of hiding themselves to an extraordinary extent, and they have unlimited confidence in their own invisibility. This was demonstrated by me one evening when I sat for twenty minutes carefully spying the surrounding country. The knoll on which I sat commanded a small shallow hollow. In this there was not a vestige of cover except a few thin Thuya bushes Wiiich looked as if they could not hide a rat. It was not till I rose to shift my position that a female Aroui and two yearlings started from these bushes. They had been lying within 60 yards of me, and must have been fully conscious of m y presence all the time. The Aroui, in this habit of hiding, is very like the Pyrenean Ibex, which lives in rather similar ground, and also trusts to concealment in preference to flight. It is very similar to it in other respects-e.g. observe the inward turn of the end of the horus to enable it, I presume, to push through the scrub. The Alpine Ibex, which lives in the open, has no such inward curve. The Mountain-Gazelle of Algeria, which Mr. Sclater identifies as Gazella kevella 1, is about twice the size of the common Gazelle of the plains (Gazella dorcas), and has straight instead of lyre-shaped horns. It lives on the same kind of steep ground as the Aroui, perhaps at a rather lower elevation. The fact that it is essentially a mountain animal is, I think, shown by its large callous knees, like those of a London cab-horse. The Aroui has the same. They are, I think, absent in the Gazella dorcas. Another feature consists of the curious hollows or pouches on either side of the testicles. It was suggested that they are for the purpose of concealing those organs in cold weather. The Gazella kevella is rarely seen, and still more rarely got. We had five accomplished telescopists in m y party, but we only spied it on the single occasion when I killed the one of which the head is now exhibited. This was on a low range a few miles to the west of El Outaja. On two other occasions we "pumped" them without getting a shot. Out of two or three hundred pairs of Gazelle-horns which I saw in curiosity-shops in Biskra, there were only four or five pairs of the "Edmi," as the Arabs call this Gazelle. 2. On a remarkable Antler from Asia Minor. By R. LYDEKKER, B.A._, F.Z.S. (Plate XXX.) [Eeceived March 28, 1890.] In the year 1879 Mr. C. G. Danford 2 exhibited to the Society an antler of a large Deer from Asia Minor; while subsequently, in a communication by that gentleman and the late Mr. E. R. Alston 3, 1 [Gazella kevella (Pallas), as identified by Lataste (Etude de la Faune des Vertebres de Barbarie, p. 172).-P. L. S.J - Proc. Zool. Soc. 1879, p. 562. 3 Ibid. 1880, p. 54. |