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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 

 No. I.— NOTES ON SOME MAMMALS OF SIKKIM. 



In Blanford's Mammals of India the Thar is given as a native of Sikkim 

 on the authority of specimens procured by the late Mr. Mandelli from 

 native shikaris. I knew this gentlemen well, and I know that these men 

 went far beyond the boundaries of Sikkim ; and as during my four previous 

 visits to this ever delightful country, I had never been able to get a speci- 

 men or any certain proof of its existence, I had always been sceptical. 

 Mr. Gammie, who lived many years in Sikkim, and who wrote the Chapter 

 on Mammals for the Gazetteer of Sikkim, published in 1894, omits any 

 mention of this animal. When at Lachoong in March last I saw at about 

 10,000 feet eleva.tion on a rocky steep covered with brushwood a laroe 

 animal which the Bhatias called Thar, and being unable to approach it 

 myself sent a native to try and kill it. Three days afterwards he sent 

 down the head of a very large old Serow {NemorhcBdus) whose horn was 

 10 inches long, (the other was broken off when the animal fell from a 

 cliff). On enquiry I found that this animal is generally called Thar, by the 

 Paharias and planters who often kill them in the low hot vallies of British 

 Sikkim. But Mr. Claude White tells me that during his long residence ia 

 the country he procured one specimen of the real Thar, whose head is 

 now in his possession in England, and that he has reliable information of its 

 existence in two places, namely, the eastern Singalelah range, north of the 

 Eummam valley and the very steep and inaccessible mountains on the 

 west side of the Tista valley between the Talung valley and the Zemu river 

 which joins the Lachen valley just above Lamting. 



It is much to be hoped that some European, who must be a really active 

 and skilful mountaineer, will endeavour to explore this untrodden part of 

 Sikkim and learn something more of this animal. April and October would 

 be the best time to attempt it. 



When I was at Lachoong with the late Mr. Blanford in September 1870, 

 my Lepcha shikari killed a large Wild Dog, an animal which I had never seen 

 alive until March last, when I saw one which had been eating the carcass of a 

 dead Yak within a mile of Lachoong. Blanford in the Mammals says that 

 the Malayan Wild Dog Cyon rutilans occurs in Tennasserim, but it is not 

 known whether the Wild Dog of Northern Burma is this or the Indian species 

 Cyon duhhunensis. Gammie in the Gazetteer of Sikkim, p. ^36, says that the 

 natives are very positive about the occurrence of two Wild Dogs, which differ 

 in size and habits, as well as in colour. '^ The large sort they call Hindu, 

 and say that it goes in pairs or in parties of 3 or 4 and is of a brownish 

 colour with a black muzzle ; the other sort which they call the Mussalman 

 is smaller, of a uniform reddish colour, and going in packs of 10 or 12. The 

 Hindu sort is in great request among native cattle doctors, who consider 

 every atom of its body, including the bones, an infallible remedy in 

 rinderpest. The Nepalese also declare it to be a sure remedy in dysentery 

 and other diseases. The Mussalman sort is not generally of such high 

 repute as medicine, and by some is considered worthless. " 



Before reading this I received exactly the same information from two 

 English-speaking Nepalese of such position that I cannot doubt their belief 

 in its accuracy, namely, Biroo Singh, Forest Ranger of the Tonglo forests, 

 who further says that when the Gurung shepherds come to Sundlikpho 

 during the rainy season the Mussalman Dogs, which he has seen in packs of 

 12 or 13, kill many sheep. My other informant, Sirdar Bahadur Bhimdai 

 Roy, was formerly forest ranger on Tonglo, where he procured for the late 

 Mr. Knyvett and myself many new Lepidoptera in 1886, and is now 

 Deputy Superintendent of Police at Darjeeling, 



