REVIEW. 249 



BoselajjJms tragocamelus — save the mark, is nothing but our 

 old i'riend Portax pidus : the Nilgai. The Maratha name *' EWiz" 

 or "RoW is wrongly given as " Ru-i,'' and a name given as that 

 used by the Gonds, " Guraya," cannot be universal, as Forsyth, 

 an excellent authority, gives " Rohi " as the Gond name in the 

 " Song of Lingo.'* The description is good, except that the 

 animal is described as "rarely met with in thick forest." It was 

 very common in the heaviest Khandesh forests twenty years ago, 

 but does not inhabit actual thickets. Forsyth justly notices it as 

 the biggest brute in Central India, except the bison. A very small 

 { but mature and blue) bull, weighed piecemeal by the present 

 writer, came to three hundredweight. His live-weight was prob- 

 ably little under four. 



The sanctity attributed to this animal by the Hindus enables 

 it to survive the other wild ruminants in some districts. The writer 

 can remember its being held ** not shikar " in Khandesh, and once 

 actually stoned a herd out of his way there, so careless were they 

 of the presence of man. 



The practice of making enamelled shields of the neck skin, and 

 the general decay of piety, have made the Nilgais a trifle shyer 

 since those days, when Lord Mayo was Viceroy. 



Mr. Blanford calls his next beast " Tetracerus quadricornis — 

 the four-horned antelope," which is a foul barbarism, unless indeed 

 we are to write Rhinocej'ws, or to give up even the Latin grammar 

 bodily. The rest of the article upon this creature that never did him 

 any harm, is equally inaccurate. It begins with " Fur thin, harsh, 

 and short." Now, although this description does apply to some 

 skins, especially if compared with those of fine deer, the fur in 

 Bombay specimens is often thicker and longer than that of any 

 other Peninsular antelope, and scarcely more harsh than that of any 

 but the gazelle. 



In a chance specimen, brought to the writer a fortnight ago, the 

 hair on the sides and back was nearly an inch long. In another, 

 now picketed by the tent, it exceeds an inch. The little beast is 

 almost shaggy, and this is its character amongst the strictly Indian 

 antelopes of the Peninsula. The writer has shot many ; and kept 

 many alive ; and the specimen now referred to will probably live to 



