MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 151 



refrain from wandering away into the jungle miles away from them in 

 search of a sambur, pig, bison or rhinoceros, the bagging of any one of 

 which he knows will bring him in food as well as money, or of lending his 

 gun to more skilled hunters than himself for the same purpose. 



W. S. THOM. 



Paletwa, Wth November 1910. 



[The above note by Mr. W. S. Thorn was written in 1910 and orig-inally intended 

 for publication in the "' Indian Field " but never sent. Recently Mr. Thom came 

 across this note and offered it to us. He has kindly allowed us to make a few 

 alterations in the nomenclature as broug'ht up-to-date by Mr. Pocock. — Eds. ] 



No. IX.— NOTES ON THE DOMESTIC YAK OF THE 

 TAGHDUMBASH PAMIR. 



[With a plate.) 



Of all the domestic animals of the Pamir Plateau, none are more 

 interesting than the Yak known by its owners as the " Khushgao. " It is 

 a strong and sturdy creature, with short legs, low quarters, head hanging 

 close to the ground, warmly clad in thick long hair and with a great bushy 

 tail. There are two varieties of the domestic yak, the horned and the 

 hornless, which seem to be completely distinct. From what I could learn, 

 each variety breeds true ; the horned always producing horned offspring 

 and the hornless producing hornless offspring, but the problem as to what 

 would be the characters of a calf, resulting from the union between horned 

 and hornless parents, seemed to be far beyond the limited intelligence of 

 a Pamir Nomad. Many yaks are subjected to castration at about the age 

 of one year but this has no relationship to the absence of horns. The 

 length of the horns is somewhat variable but the mean of a number of 

 measurements gave an average length of 22 inches. The majority of yaks 

 are of a uniform black colour but there are often to be seen animals of a 

 light brown or dun tint. Should a yak of a black colour vary in any part 

 towards a different colour, that varying colour is always white, and it may 

 be taken as a rule, to which 1 saw no exceptions, that if any part of the 

 body is white then the face will also be either partially or completely white. 

 A white face and a white tail, associated with white on the legs, is a very 

 common variety and when a similar band runs along the spine in continuation 

 with the face in front and the tail behind and accompanied beneath by 

 a white belly, a most frequent and characteristic mode of coloration is 

 then assumed. The brown colour enters into the same combinations with the 

 white as does the black, but, on no occasion, was black ever seen associated 

 with brown in the same animal. 



The body of the yak is clothed in a thick warm coat of hair or rather in 

 a coat of two different kinds of hair which vary greatly in winter and 

 summer. Superficially is seen the covering of long, thick, straight hairs, 

 hanging vertically downwards over the greater portion of the trunk 

 and, though curled on the lower portion of the limbs, is especially long 

 over their upper parts, over the angle of the jaw, the tail, the sides of the 

 abdomen and forming a bushy tuft between the horns and prolonged down 

 from the neck as a thick strong mane. Conspicuous as is this clothing 

 of long hair, it does not appear to be the important means of maintaining 

 the bodily warmth throughout the rigorous winter climate ; for underlying 

 it, and in close contact with the skin, is a dense coating of fine hairs, closely 

 matted and interwoven together and protecting the whole body in a warm 

 wool-like covering. The superficial coat may be considered as permanent, 

 in that it does not alter in density according to the season, but the 



