MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 745 



We waited till nearly dark in the first instance. To-day the afore-mentioned 

 native assured me it was no use waiting because the parents never returned 

 to look after their young, as they had all they wanted on the premises. 



N. F. T. WILSON, Lieut., 

 Bombay, April, 1898. R.I.M.S. " Clive." 



No. XV.-THE HYBEENATING OF INDIAN BEARS, ETC. 



With reference to Major Rodon's note at the head of page 548 in your 

 last number (Vol. XI, No. 3 ), it may interest some members to know that 

 I found a black bear (Ursus torquatus) hybernating in a hollow which the 

 Kafirs had cut in the stem of a large deodar, about three feet from the 

 ground, at about 7,000 feet in the Utzan Nullah, near Drosh, on the 20th 

 January last, and shot him. He had a splendid coat, a half-inch lining of fat 

 and an empty stomach. The drowsy way in which he twisted his head back- 

 wards and forwards in the hole when first aroused was distinctly ludicrous. He 

 is a very small bear, as was also another (a female), which I got last summer. 



The Markhor heads up here are very interesting. I have seen the two 

 largest heads in the same herd, and they are entirely different ,• one has a 

 widespread and a fine spiral with the curve at a low angle to the horizontal 

 and the other has horns, close together and perfectly straight with a very 

 high-angled curve. This last is quite unlike the trans-Indus variety in Kin- 

 loch's book, and I have not seen a specimen like it in any Mess or Museum. 



F. E. G. SKEY, Captain, R.E. 

 Drosh, April, 1898. 



No. XVI— THE PROTECTIVE POWER OF SCENT IN ANIMALS. 



I confess to a feeling of astonishment when I read Mr, Macleod's notes 

 on the protective powers of scent in Animals, for I gathered that he is of 

 opinion that the deer of Bombay possess these powers to a very limited extent. 

 This evidence, he admits, is of a negative character, and for the credit of the 

 animals in that part of India I trust it will be long before it can be proved 

 that they have so degenerated. There can, of course, be no doubt that pro- 

 tective powers develope with necessity, but as man possessing no protective 

 instinct in this form can wind a tiger or a boar at twenty paces, a deer which 

 with its more delicate organs, cannot do the same at ten times that distance 

 may, I think, be taken to have merited the term above used. It was only 

 yesterday that I observed an old cow-buffalo nosing out a six hours' old tiger 

 track merely for curiosity, and she had her protective powers of scent 

 dulled by generations of domesticity. I can speak from experience only of 



* From a comparison between the photographs sent by Capt. Skey and the illus- 

 trations of the different varieties of Markhor given in Blanford's Mammalia 

 (Fauna of British India, Ac.}, pages 506-7, it is quite evident that the two varieties 

 referred to in the same herd are the Pir-Panjal var. (Fig. 165) and the Cabul 

 var. (Fig. 166).— Ed. 



