J890.] MR. LYDEKKER ON AN ANTLER FROM ASIA MINOR. 363 



hearing of the Arabs and their goats, and as they cannot get 

 away they have developed the art of hiding themselves to an extra- 

 ordinary extent, and they have unhmited confidence in their own 

 invisibility. This was deaaonstrated by me one evening when I sat for 

 twenty minutes carefully spying the surrounding country. The knoll 

 on which I sat commanded a small shallow hollow. In this there 

 was not a vestige of cover except a few thin Thuya bushes wiiich 

 looked as if they could not hide a rat. It was not till I rose to shift 

 my position that a female Aroui and two yearlings started from these 

 bushes. They had been lying within 60 yards of me, and must have 

 been fully conscious of my presence all the time. The Aroui, in this 

 habit of hiding, is very like the Pyrenean Ibex, which lives in 

 rather similar ground, and also trusts to concealment in preference to 

 flight. It is very similar to it in other respects — e.g. observe the 

 inward turn of the end of the horns to enable it, I presume, to push 

 through the scrub. The Alpine Ibex, which lives in the open, has 

 no such inward curve. 



The Mouutain-Gazelle of Algeria, which Mr. Sclater identifies as 

 Gazella kevella ', is about twice the size of the common Gazelle of 

 the plains {Gazella dorcas), and has straight instead of lyre-shaped 

 horns. It lives on the same kind of steep ground as the Aroui, 

 perhaps at a rather lower elevation. The fact that it is essentially a 

 mountain animal is, I think, shown by its large callous knees, like 

 those of a London cab-horse. The Aroui has the same. They are, 

 I think, absent in the Gazella dorcas. Another feature consists of 

 the curious hollows or pouches on eiiher side of the testicles. It was 

 suggested that they are for the purpose of concealing those organs 

 in cold weather. 



The Gazella kevella is rarely seen, and still more rarely got. We 

 had five accomplished telescopists in my party, but we only spied it 

 on the single occasion when I killed the one of which the head is 

 now exhibited. This was on a low range a few miles to the west of 

 El Outaja. On two other occasions we "pumped" them without 

 getting a shot. Out of two or three hundred pairs of Gazelle-horns 

 which I saw in curiosity-shops in Biskra, there were only four or 

 five pairs of the " Edmi," as the Arabs call this Gazelle. 



2. On a remarkable Antler from Asia Minor. 

 By K. Lydekker, B.A., F.Z.S. 



(Plate XXX.) 



[Eeceived March 28, 1890.] 



In the year 1879 Mr. C. G. Danford ^ exhibited to the Society an 

 antler of a large Deer from Asia Minor; while subsequently, in a 

 communication by that gentleman and the late Mr. E. H. Alston ^, 



^ {^G-azella kevella (Pallas), as identified by Lataste (Etude de la Faune des 

 Vertebres de Barbarie, p. 172). — P. L. S.J 



- Proc. Zool. Soc. 1879, p. 562. ^ Ibid. 1880, p. 54. 



