312 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIL 



matter strictly in accordance with the rules of nomenclature long- 

 before all these difficulties, initiated by Blanford, arose and I can 

 g«e no excusable pretext for ignoring his decision unless each 

 author has the right to choose the name he pleases for an animal 

 irrespective of the work of his predecessors. 



The three species of Gorals now recognised from British India 

 and Burma may be distinguished as follows : — 



a Tail shorter, about three inches long exckisive of the hair : 

 black stripe on foreleg passing over the knee down the 

 middle of the cannon bone to the fetlock (Himalayas). 

 6 Grey or fawn-grey, more or less suffused 

 with black ; spinal stripe absent or not 

 passing beyond withers ; no stripe down 

 middle of tail and none up back of thigh . . . goral. 

 V Brown suffused with black ; spinal stripe 

 reaching at least to croup ; a black stripe 

 down tail ; blackish up back of thigh . . . hodgsoni. 

 a' Tail longer, about 5 inches without hair ; 

 black stripe on foreleg not passing over knee 

 but turning and running down outer side of 

 cannon bone (China to Arakan) griseus. 



The Himalayan Gorals. 



In Blanford's Mammals of British India, pp. 516-517, the Gorals 

 of the Himalayas were assigned to a single species to which the 

 name Gemas goral was given. But in 1905 Mr. Lydekker pointed 

 out that there are two types of this animal in that mountain range, 

 namely, a ' grey ' type and a ' brown ' type. To the grey one he 

 gav^e the new name hedfordi and restricted the old name goral to 

 the ' brown ' one. That these two kinds of Goral exist is undeni- 

 able, but Mr. Ljrdekker's selection of the technical names was most 

 unrortunate, because Hardwicke, the original describer of Antilope 

 goral, expressly stated that the animal to which he gave the name, 

 a specimen living in the Barrackpore menagerie whither it had 

 oeen sent from Katmandu, was of a ' grey mouse-colour," the 

 Lacin diagnosis running ' corpore mpra colore murino canescente ! 

 Since it is quite impossible to believe that Hardwicke could have 

 applied those epithets to an animal which was independently 

 described by Hodgson as ' rusty and brown ', by Blanford as 

 ' brown, more or less rufous ' and by Mr. Lydekker as ' rufous 

 brown', there is no logical escape from the conclusion that Mr. 

 Lydekker's ' grey ' goral is the same as Hardwicke's goral and 

 must take the technical term goral, with hedfordi as its 

 synonym. 



Clearly, therefore, it was the ' brown ' Himalayan Goral that 

 required a new name and not the 'grey' one. This name I 



