~MEMOIR ON THE MAMMALOGY OF THE HIMALAYAS. 
By WM. OGILBY, Esea., M.A., 
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical, Geological, Linnean, and Statistical Societies ; 
Secretary of the Zoological Society. 
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In the early part of the year 1833, Professor Royle put into my hands an extensive Collection of 
Zoological Specimens, made during his excursions through the Western parts of the Himalayan 
Mountains, of which the rich Botanical results are now in course of publication, with a request that I 
would furnish him with a Catalogue Raisonnée of the different species of which it contained the spoils, 
to be added as an Appendix to his work. Whilst occupied in this easy and unostentatious task, various 
observations presented themselves, which induced me to propose to my friend a slight alteration of his 
original plan, so as to embrace a general outline of the Mammalogy of the Mountain Regions of 
Northern India, for the purpose of exhibiting, at one view, the intimate relations which I soon 
perceived to subsist between the animal productions of this elevated and extensive mountain chain and 
those of Northern Europe, Asia, and America. It soon became obvious, in fact, that the Zoology, 
like the Botany of the Hills, differed essentially from that of the sultry plains of India, which skirt 
their southern base; that, though occasionally mixed with tropical forms, it was, upon the whole, of a 
character closely resembling that of the more temperate and northern latitudes; and that the insulated 
position of these remarkable mountains, exhibiting, as they do, the rare and interesting phenomenon of 
a temperate and even a boreal climate on the very confines of the tropic, where the summer heat is 
necessarily greater than even under the equator itself, gave an importance to the inquiry, as connected 
with the geographical distribution of Animal Life, which promised the most important results. The 
nature of the problem, indeed, and the very different conditions of Animal Life, as compared with that 
of Vegetables, forbade me to anticipate the discovery of laws of distribution in the Animal Kingdom, 
so definite and circumscribed as those which Baron Humboldt has established with regard to Plants ; 
the principle of animality, if I may be allowed the expression, possesses an innate power of adaptation 
which renders Animals in some measure independent of climate, particularly as compared with Vegetables, 
and which increases in proportion as we ascend in the scale of life; but I felt that if any such laws of 
geographical distribution prevailed in Zoology, they might naturally be expected to be exhibited most 
clearly and unequivocally on a theatre like this, and therefore that the opportunity should not be 
— neglected of investigating the circumstances of a problem which appeared to promise so much scientific 
From the observation just made, viz. that the power which all animals possess, in a greater or less 
a degree, of adapting themselves to different varieties of climate, and of withstanding, uninjured, the 
effects of temperatures foreign to their natural habits, increases in proportion as we ascend from the 
lower to the higher tribes, it will be seen that the Mammalia—the class which I had undertaken to 
review—form one of the most unfavourable groups for the discussion of this important question. 
Indeed, were it not from their limited powers of locomotion, they would be the very worst of all, 
because their high position in the scale of life, and the superior intelligence and resources with which 
it 
