Bharal 



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General colour of upper-parts brownish-gray, with a tinge of slaty-blue, 

 becoming browner in summer, and more distinctly slaty-grav, washed with 

 brown, in winter ; under-parts, inside and back of limbs, and buttocks as 

 tar as the base of the tail white ; in adult rams the fice, chest, a stripe down 

 the whole front of the legs except the knees, which are white, a band along the 

 lower part of the flanks bordering the white of the under-parts, and the ter- 

 minal two-thirds of the tail white. In the females the black markings on the 



Fig. 44. — Head of male Bharal. (Rowland Ward, Records of Big Game.) 



face, chest, and flanks wanting. Colour of horns blackish-olive. The 

 weight of a full-grown male bharal is about i ^o pounds. 



With regard to the systematic position of the bharal, Mr. Brian 

 Hodgson long ago pointed out that it differed from the more typical sheep 

 by the absence of face-glands and the pits for their reception in the skull ; 

 this being a feature in which it resembles the goats. He also pointed out 

 that the tail is more like that of a goat than of a sheep. In a paper com- 

 municated to the Journa/ of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1880, I pointed 

 out other features in which the bharal differs from the typical sheep and 

 approximates to the goats. It is there stated that an important caprine 

 feature is to be found in the form of the basioccipital bone, or that element 

 forming the hinder extremity of the base of the skull. 



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