246 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



REVIEW 



ON 



* The Mammalia of India — (continued from page 307). 

 We dropped Mr. Blanf ord at the tail of the Elephant ; after whom 

 in his arrangement come the Equidce. Now the Indian Bquidce have 

 been lately discussed in these pages by our lamented member, 

 Mr. Steel, who knew much more about them than either our author 

 or his reviewer. It is only necessary to remark in this place that 

 Mr. Blanford's printers have caused him to represent Equus cahallus 

 ■with four toes ! {vide page 468, engraving), which liberality is 

 balanced by allowing only one to the tapir ! It is only fair to say 

 that in very few instances has the correction of his proofs been so 

 ludicrously overlooked. He puts all the Asiatic wild asses into one 

 species, Equus hemiconus, and passes on to the Rhinoceroses, of which 

 he allows us three. The chief is B. unicornis, which, Mr. Blanford 

 says, " was common in the Panjab as far west as Peshawar in the 

 time of the Emperor Baber.''* This story is everlastingly turning 

 up : sometimes in very curious forms. It is not long since the 

 President of our chum Society was reported as having informed it 

 that the Emperor Baber " killed Hippopotamuses in Bannu," and 

 really the one story is not much more unlikely than the other. The 

 author of the Book of Job expressly mentions Behemoth as indifferent 

 to the floods of Jordan, and, if we are to open our mouths for this 

 sort of scientific diet, a Hippopotamusf might nearly as well have 

 got from the Jordan to the Kuram as a Ehinoceros to Peshawar. 



The whole evidence in both cases is contained in the following 

 extract from the Memoirs of His late Majesty the Emperor Zahir- 

 u'd-din Muhammad (commonly called Babar Khan, very much as 

 our first Richard was called Coeur do Lion ; and upon as good 

 cause). The Emperor (to be) was in possession of Kabul and 

 raiding in Afghanistan ; and wishing to extend that operation to 

 Hindustan, i. e., across the Indus, he sent an officer to examine the 

 banks of the river ; and says he : — 



" I myself set off for Sawate, which they likewise call Karak- 

 Karreh, to hunt the Rhinoceros. We started many Rhinoceroses, 



* Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Bukma. Published tinder 

 the authority of the Secretary of State for India in Council. Edited by W.T. Blanford, 

 F.R.S. Mammalia ; by W. T. Blanford, F.R.S. Part II. {Notice continued). 



t The Hippopotamus existed in India in the Pleistocene period. 



