318 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXII. 



types. Where the pigment is least apparent the Shen-si Takin is 

 a beautiful golden yellow colour almost throughout. 



It cannot be doubted that the evanescence of the pigment is a 

 derivative and not a primitive character and this view receives the 

 strongest support from the uniformly brown colour of the young 

 both of the Assamese and Sze-chuen animals, the pale colour being- 

 added later in life. This being so we may conclude that the 

 comparatively dark North Indian Takin is the least specialised 

 and the Shen-si Takin the most specialised representative of the 

 genus Budorcas hitherto discovered. 



From what has been said it will be clear that although the Shen- 

 si Takin was described as a new species, it does not differ from 

 previously described Takins in characters of any great moment : 

 and that gradual evanescence of pigment can be traced from the 

 southern to the northern forms. 



Speaking of B. taxicolor and B. tibetamts in my paper quoted 

 above, I said (p. 817) : "The two forms indeed are not nearly 

 so distinct from one another as Mr. Lydekker's descriptions would 

 lead one to suppose, and it is quite possible that Milne-Edwards 

 was after all quite right in regarding them merely as local races of 

 one and the same species." 



This suspicion arose from the fact that several of the characters 

 relied upon by Mr. Lydekker were shown by the literature of the 

 subject to have no existence in reality and from the impossibility of 

 laying hold of any convincing and definable differences in the skull 

 and horns ; the differences of colour, in fact, are practically the 

 only differences to rely upon in distinguishing the animals. 

 And in the Field, May 6th, 1911, p. 866, I suggested that there 

 were no logical grounds for regarding the Shen-si and Sze-chuen 

 Takins other than as local races. Quite recently Mr. Lydekker 

 adopted this suggestion [Field, October 26th, 1912, p. 860) when 

 writing of some Takins obtained by Mr. Fenwick Owen in Kansu, 

 he said these " Specimens suggest that all the Chinese Takins are 

 local forms of a single specific type." He also said of this Kansu 

 Takin that it " appears to be a whole coloured animal very similar 

 to the Golden Takin (B. hedfordi) from Shen-si, but darker in 

 colour." But we know from the typical B. taxicolor that the exact 

 shade of colour has no systematic value. Hence it probably has 

 none in the case of the Chinese forms. A further point to be 

 noticed is this. A Takin from Kansu was described by Mr. 

 Lydekker (in Rowland Ward's Records, p. 350, 1907) a,s Budaras 

 sinensis, as I have already pointed out in this Journal (Vol XIX, p. 

 820). But this animal was subsequently regarded by its describer 

 as identical with the Sze-chuen form B. tihetanus. 



The position then appears to be this. Two kinds of Takins are 

 alleged to exist in Kansu, namely, tihetanus which ranges southwards 



