The Yak 



In Ladak the great district for yak is the Chang- 

 chenmo valley, and the dreary regions between this and 

 the Upper Indus ; but these animals are yearly becoming 

 scarcer within the territories under the rule of the 

 Maharaja of Kashmir, although reported to be numerous 

 in Tibet proper. One of the earliest British sportsmen 

 in the Chang-chenmo district was General A. A. Kinloch, 

 who has given an excellent account of the habits of wild 

 yak. A remarkably fine head belonged to an animal 

 shot in the Kuen-Lun range by the late Mr. A. 

 Dalgleish, who about the year 1875 was in the employ 



Fig. 11. — Black Domesticated Yak at Woburn Abbey, truin a pliotoi^rapli by the 

 Duchess of Bedford. 



of the Central Asian Trading Company. More recently 

 yak have been shot by Mr. St. George Littledale, by 

 Mr. H. Z. Darrah and Major P. H. G. Powell-Cotton, 

 and others. An interesting account of yak-shooting 

 by Mr. Edgar Phelps will be found in vol. xiii. of the 

 Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (1900). 

 Yak feed chiefly upon the tufts of wiry grass dotted 

 over the arid soil of the Tibetan plateau, and grow tat 

 upon such apparently insufficient fodder. In search of 

 food, or merely from a roving disposition, they are in 

 the habit of traversing lo'i^g distances, and teed mostly 



81 G 



