Persian Wild Goat 261 



compressed, with the inner front edge (which is the only one developed) 

 sharp, keeled for some distance above the base^ and above this bearing 

 several bold widely-separated knobs ; on the inside nearly flat, externally 

 convex, behind rounded ; tips generally convergent, but occasionally 

 divergent ; throughout faintly striated ; in colour nearly black. Beard 

 of male restricted to the chin, very long, and in old males occupying 

 the whole width of the chin, but in younger animals only the middle ; 

 together with the hair on the neck and shoulders, longest in winter, at 

 which season a soft under-tur is developed in the colder parts of the 

 animal's habitat. General ground-colour of upper-parts brownish-gray 

 in winter, reddish -brown in summer, becoming paler in old males ; 

 under-parts and inner sides of buttocks and thighs white or whitish ; 

 in adult and subadult males the face, a broad streak from the nape of 

 the neck to the root of the tail, the entire tail, a collar on the neck, 

 expanding to form a breast-plate below, the throat, chin, beard, the front 

 of the limbs, except the knees, and a stripe along the flanks separating 

 the brown of the back from the white ot the under-parts and joining 

 the dark streak on the front of the thi2;hs, dark blackish-brown, becoming- 

 in some cases nearly black on the beard, face, and some other parts ; knee 

 (carpus), the hinder and inner surface of the fore-leg below this, the hock 

 (tarsus), and the inner and hinder surface of the hind-leg below the same, 

 white or whitish. 



Some amount of individual variation is displayed in regard to the 

 extent of the black and white markings. Of several mounted specimens 

 in the British Museum, two old males, the one from Erzerum and the 

 other from Mount Ararat, are of very large size, and have the beard 

 extending the whole width of the chin. On the other hand, in a pair 

 ot males from the Cilician Taurus the size is considerably less, and the 

 beard occupies only the middle of the chin. It is doubtful if these 

 difterences are due to anything more than disparity of age. The dift'erence 



