Saio^a 187 



t? 



THE SAIGA 



{Saiga tatarica) 

 (Plate II. Fig. 8) 



At or about the epoch when the lordly mammoth browsed on the 

 leaves of the forest trees bordering the Thames valley, and the two-horned 

 woolly rhinoceros grazed undisturbed on the adjacent stretches of sward, 

 the more sandy and steppe-like localities in the same district were visited, 

 at least occasionally, by the clumsy and uncouth-looking antelope known 

 to the Russians as the saigak, and to the Kalmuk Tatars as gorossun. 



That such was really the case is demonstrated by the circumstance that 

 the upper portion of a skull of this antelope was dug up not many years 

 ago in the superficial deposits of Twickenham ; the characters ot this 

 unique specimen being such as to leave no room for doubt as to the 

 correctness of the determination. From the extreme rarity ot its remains 

 it would seem, however, that at the epoch in question the saiga was tar 

 from a common animal in England (at that time joined to the Continent), 

 and it may well be that the south-east of England formed the extreme 

 western limits of its range, and that only a few venturesome individuals 

 wandered so far away from the main habitat of the species. Be this as it 

 may, the saiga, like the musk-ox, has long since disappeared entirely from 

 Western Europe, although, unlike the latter animal, it still survives in 

 Eastern Europe and North- Western Asia and is unknown in the western 

 hemisphere. 



During the sixties living saigas were once more to be seen in the 

 neighbourhood of their old haunts, four examples (two of which are 

 figured in the Society's Proceedings for 1867) having been exhibited in the 

 menagerie of the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park between the 

 years 1864 and 1869. But between about 1870 and the close of the last 



