OF SELBORNE. 



75 



laboured in that hot climate. And we know that 

 grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils 

 necessary, and a, perfection, in hunters and running 

 horses. 



Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems 

 to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : 



retention by this individual of the immature colours, and which arrested 

 the perfect growth of the horns, has also, I do not hesitate in believing, 

 checked the developement of the suborbital sinuses and rendered them 

 useless. 



I am not disposed, on this occasion, to enter farther into the specula- 

 tions which might be founded on the facts just recorded with respect to 

 the suborbital sinus in the Indian antelope ; and I quit the subject, for 

 the present, with the remark that they seem to me to justify the obser- 

 vation with which I commenced. More numerous facts, arid more full 

 consideration of them, will determine before long the degree of value 

 that should be attached to this view of the subject. 



By a letter which I have just received from Mr. Hodgson, I find that 

 he has had his attention excited by the observation of the antelopes 

 which he has kept alive in Nepal ; and that he also has been led to the 

 conclusion that there exists a relation between these sinuses and their 

 secretions and the other functions referred to. His continued observa- 

 tion, favourably as he is circumstanced for the acquisition of information 

 on all subjects of Nepalese zoology, will doubtless tend to elucidate this 

 yet unsettled point, on which Dr. Jacob, at the meeting of the British 

 Association in Dublin, in 1835, laid before the members assembled some 

 valuable observations. E. T. B.] 



HEADS OK THE INLilAN ANTELOPE. 



