THE IBEX 



837 



almost any time of the day on the green patches of herbage among the higher crags 

 and snow fields, only taking a siesta for a few hours at a time. In the dead of winter 

 they are found much lower 

 on the mountain sides. Pro- 

 vided they do not see the 

 hunter, they are not always 

 scared away by firing, prob- 

 ably owing to their being so 

 accustomed to hearing the 

 noise of falling rocks and 

 avalanches. And sometimes 

 they get so bewildered by the 

 echoes of a shot, that they 

 give time for several easy 

 chances before making up their 

 minds to be off. If one of 

 them, however, catches only 

 a glimpse of anything sus- 

 picious, a warning whistle at 

 once sends off the whole herd, 

 although they often depart 

 very leisurely, even after being 

 shot at. Ibex sometimes con- 

 gregate in large numbers, but 

 they are usually found in 

 flocks of from six or seven to 

 twenty or so, the older bucks 



often herding separately, except during the rutting season. Despite the quantities 

 that are shot, killed by avalanches, and by those terrible foes to all Himalayan 

 game, the wild dogs, there appears to be little decrease in their numbers on the 

 more sequestered hunting grounds, for they are very prolific, each doe having as 

 a rule a pair of kids every summer. The villagers train their dogs to hunt them 

 down, when the ibex become so stupefied with terror that they are easily approached 

 and shot." 



The foregoing account refers to the habits of this ibex in the Kashmir dis- 

 trict, and it accords in the main with an earlier one from the pen of General Kinloch. 

 The latter writer states that ibex but seldom come as low as the upper limits of 

 forest; and even during the winter "do not, as a rule, descend very low, but resort 

 to places where, from the steepness of the hillside, the snow does not lie in any 

 quantity. Here they may be detained for weeks by a heavy fall, picking a scanty 

 subsistence from the scattered tufts of withered herbage that here and there crop 

 out of the crevices of the rocks. At this season males and females herd together; 

 but as the snow melts and the time for the birth of the young approaches, the old 

 males forsake the females altogether, and, as the summer advances, retire to the 

 most inaccessible mountains, frequently sleeping during the day above the limits 



HEAD OF "HIMALAYAN IBEX. 



