770 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIIL 



No. IV,— ALTITUDE TO WHICH ELEPHANTS ASCEND. 



In your current issue Capt. Molesworth asks if elephants have ever before 

 been observed at 10,200 ft. elevation. Though I have never seen them 

 myself, a number of people who know the Kalimpong district have told me 

 that elephants are frequently seen on Rechila at high elevations and the 

 following note in the margin of my copy of the " Fauna of British India " 

 may be of interest. The book originally belonged to the late Mr. Tinne of 

 the Forest Department and the note is in his handwriting : — 



*' They (elephants) go at all seasons of the year to the top of liechila and 

 Sathila in British Bhvitan, 10,060 ft., to feed on the Maling bamboo [Arun- 

 dinaria racemosa) and I think, to escape the mosquitoes and other pests in 

 the Dooars. I have found fresh tracks at most seasons of the year, even 

 through 2 ft. of snow in April 1907 when the season was unusually late. As 

 the approach to the summit is extremely steep they must have a regular 

 track, probably crossing from side to side of the Neora (Narchu) river. 

 From the tracks they appear to wade into the ponds found at 9,200 ft. 

 but not extensively. They probably also graze on the small grassy mead- 

 ows which cap Rechila where bamboo and rhodadendron grow." 



E. O. SHEBBEARE, i.f.s. 

 Jalpaigxjki, Bengal, 15th December 1914. 



No. v.— THE GREAT PAMIR OR MARCO POLOS SHEEP 

 (OVIS FOLl). 



" Ye emperors, kings, dukes, marquises, earls, and knights and all other 

 people desirous of knowing 'the diversities of the races of mankind, as well 

 as the diversities of kingdoms, provinces, and regions of all parts of the 

 East, read through this book, and ye will find in it the greatest and most 

 marvellous characteristics of the peoples especially of Armenia, Persia, 

 India and Tartary, as they are severally related in the present work 

 by Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice, who states 

 distinctly what things he saw and what things he heard from 

 others. For this book will be a truthful one." So wrote Rusti- 

 giela, a citizen of Pisa, at the dictation of Marco Polo, in A.D. 129-5, 

 both being then prisoners of war in Genoa. In A.D. 1324, Marco 

 Polo lay upon his death bed, being then some 70 years of age, and was ex- 

 horted by his friends as a matter of conscience to retract what he had 

 published, or at least to disavow the parts that were fictitious. He then 

 said that so far from having exaggerated, he had not told one-half of the 

 extraordinary things of which he had been an eye-witness. This claim has 

 been fully substantiated by every traveller who has traced the footsteps of 

 the great Venetian, but to this day little more is known of Marco Polo by 

 the majority of my countrymen, than that his name was given to the great 

 sheep which is the subject of the present article, and his travels are placed in 

 the same category as those of Sir John Mandeville, and de Rougemont. 

 Yet those travels contain all that is known about an empire that once 

 extended from the Black Sea to the Pacific, and from the Arctic into Burma. 

 The tide of its conquests spent its force among the myriads of China and 

 India, and it is now hard to realise that in the 13th and 14th centuries 

 there was a destructive force at work in Northern Asia, which might have 

 exterminated the entire population of Europe. 



In the course of his journey from Persia to Pekin, Marco Polo crossed 

 the mountain range that lies between the head-waters of the Oxus and the 

 City of Kashgar. " Here, between two ranges, you perceive a large lake, 



