,oo 



Tahr 



haunts of the old tahr, who cUmb with ease over ground where one would 

 hardly imagine that any animal would find a footing." General Macintyre,^ 

 whose account is likewise good, also bears testimony to the difficult nature 

 of the ground frequented by tahr : — " This ruminant," he writes, " is plenti- 

 tully distributed over the precipitous rocky slopes just below the snow-line, 

 and is occasionally found on some of the higher parts of the middle ranges, 

 where, however, it appears not to attain the same size as it does in the 

 higher regions below the snow-line. I have never seen a more truly wild- 

 looking animal in the Himalayas than an old buck tahr, with his long 

 frill-like mane and shaggy coat of dark grayish-brown, short sturdy legs, 

 and almost black face. . . . An old buck stands over 3 feet at the shoulder. 

 The doe, called ' tehrug,' is smaller, lighter in colour, and less shaggy, 

 with horns oi the same shape, but much smaller than those of the 

 buck. The great old bucks herd separately during the summer till 

 October, generally betaking themselves to the wildest and most un- 

 approachable places. Their colour is often so dark as, at a distance, 

 almost to look like black, more especially in the autumn. The flesh of 

 the tahr is considered by the hill-men to be a great medicine for fever and 

 rheumatism ; and shikaris often dry the flesh and sell it, and even the 

 bones, in places where fresh tahr-meat is not procurable." 



So bad is much of the ground frequented by these animals, that 

 specimens when shot frequently smash themselves into a pulp in their fall 

 down the frightful precipices. The pairing season takes place in the 

 winter months, and the kids, of which usually only one is produced at a 

 birth, are born in the following June or July, so that the period of gesta- 

 tion would appear to be about six months. 



In confinement tahr thrive well. They have been tried in the park at 

 Woburn Abbey, but some of the males developed the extraordinary habit 

 of ripping open the fallow deer with their sharp horns, and consequently 



• HiriJii-Koh, Edinburgh and London, 1891. 



