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THE SEROW.S, GOKALS AND TAKJNS OF BRITISH 

 INDIA AND THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 



BY 



R. I. POCOCK, F.L.S., F.Z.S., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE 



Zoological Society's Gardens, London. 



Part I. — Introductory Remarks upon the Structural Charac- 

 ters OF Serows, Gorals and Takins and Descriptions 

 of the Known Species of Takins {Budorcas). 



{With 2 Plates.) 



Serows, Gorals and Takins are three well-marked genera belonging 

 to a group of ruminant ungulates commonly called goat-antelopes from 

 the intermediate position they are supposed to hold between goats and 

 the anomalous assemblage known in popular rather than in 

 scientific language as antelopes. Associated with these three forms are 

 the chamois, which ranges from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus and the 

 so-called Rocky Mountain Goat of North America. It is from the 

 scientific name of the chamois, Rupicapra, that this group takes its 

 designation of Rupicaprine Antelopes. Like most of the divisions oi 

 Bovidee, the family containing the Sheep, Goats, Antelopes and Cattle, 

 the RupicaprinsB are not easy to define, except by the enumeration of a 

 complex of positive and negative features which exclude them from the 

 other divisions. Horns are present in both sexes and are only a little 

 smaller in the females than in the males ; they are finely, never coarsely, 

 ridged and having no anterior or posterior crest, and are subcylindrical 

 in section ; typically they are short, and comparatively slender, and 

 incline with a backward and more or less outward curvature over 

 the occiput, but in the chamois they are erect, with an abrupt 

 terminal hook. These characters break down more or less in the Takui, 

 in which the horns in the adults are longer, very massive at the base 

 and project at first outward from the side of the head, then form a 

 sudden backward curvature. Nevertheless the horns in the Takin start 

 us simple backwardly directed upgrowths and begin to bend outward 

 and downwards at the base when they are comparable in relative sizes 

 and shape to Ihe horns of the Goral. They then may be said in their 

 growth to go through the stage which persists in the Goral, just as the 

 horns of the Cape Bufialo and of the Gnu pass through in their deve- 

 lopment a transitory stage which characterises the less specialised 



