NATURAL ELIS TORY, 
OF THE 
MAMMALIA OF BRITISH INDIA AND CEYLON. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In laying before the public the following history of the Indian 
Mammalia, I am actuated by the feeling that a popular work on the 
subject is needed, and would be appreciated by many who do not care 
to purchase the expensive books that exist, and who also may be more 
bothered than enlightened by over-much technical phraseology and 
those learned anatomical dissertations which are necessary to the 
scientific zoologist. 
Another motive in thus venturing is, that the only complete history of 
Indian Mammalia is Dr. Jerdon’s, which is exhaustive within the 
boundaries he has assigned to India proper; but as he has excluded 
Assam, Cachar, Tenasserim, Burmah, Arracan, and Ceylon, his book 
is incomplete as a Natural History of the Mammals of British India. I 
shall have to acknowledge much to Jerdon in the following pages, 
and it is to him I owe much encouragement, whilst we were together in 
the field during the Indian Mutiny, in the pursuit of the study to which 
he devoted his life ; and the general arrangement of this work will be 
based on his book, his numbers being preserved, in order that those 
who possess his ‘Mammals of India’ may readily refer to the noted 
species. 
But I must also plead indebtedness to many other naturalists who 
have left their records in the ‘ Journals of the Asiatic Society’ and other 
publications, or who have brought out books of their own, such as Blyth, 
Elliott, Hodgson, Sherwill, Sykes, Tickell, Hutton, Kellaart, Emerson 
Tennent, and others; Col. McMaster’s ‘ Notes on Jerdon,’ Dr. Anderson’s 
‘ Anatomical and Zoological Researches,’ Horsfield’s ‘ Catalogue of the 
Mammalia in the Museum of the East India Company,’ ‘ Dr. Dobson’s 
Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera,’ the writings of Professors Martin 
Duncan, Flowers, Kitchen Parker, Boyd Dawkins, Garrod, Mr. E. R. 
Alston, Sir Victor Brooke and others; the Proceedings and Journals of 
the Zoological, Linnean, and Asiatic Societies, and the correspondence 
in Zhe Asian ; so that after all my own share is minimised to a few 
B 
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