2 2 THE FRONTIER DISTRICT OF ASTOR 



turn." It is impossible to give a description of this 

 animal that will strike the experienced man as accurate. 

 Sterndale says : " The general colour is a dirty light blue- 

 grey with a darker beard, in summer with a reddish tinge." 

 Ward, though he gives no detailed description, says 

 (page 14): "In their winter coat of grey they are 

 difficult to discover." Jerdon describes the animal's 

 colour {The Mammals of India, page 29) as "in summer 

 light greyish-brown, in winter dirty yellowish-white with 

 bluish-brown tinge." My experience of the Astor animal, 

 recorded on the spot, inclines me to think that the male, 

 in the month of April at any rate, wears a dirty-white 

 coat on his back, which hangs some distance down his 

 sides, making him a very conspicuous object indeed among 

 rocks, the " light blue-grey or greyish-brown " hardly 

 visible on the body. These were the old males ; the 

 young bucks, herding with the females, were decidedly of 

 a muddy-red, that made them, when they were motionless, 

 undistinguishable from their surroundings at even a short 

 distance. Two weeks later, in another locality, across the 

 Indus (Damot valley), the old bucks had only a broad 

 streak of dirty-white along their backs, and the light blue- 

 grey was very conspicuous. In the figure at page 442 of 

 Sterndale's Mammalia of India and Ceylon, the whitish 

 streak along the back of No. 1 variety illustrates exactly 

 what I mean. It is evident that the colour changes 

 according to season, locality, and age. The dirty-white 

 coat doubtless belongs to winter, and disappears more or 

 less quickly according to the early or late arrival of spring. 

 Perhaps the young bucks have not this distinguishing 

 colour to the same extent as their elders. The size of the 

 mtirkhor varies according to locality. Ward, in his 

 Sportsman's Guide (page 14),says: " This (the Astor markhor) 

 is larger than its representative in Kashmir proper. 



