1902.] ON THE HEAD OF A WAPITI FROM N. SIBERIA, 79 



neck of the Okapi to have had normal proportions ; in the mounted 

 skin in the Biitish Museum the neck appears to me to be a little 

 too much stretched. 



In conclusion, and in harmony with what I formerly have said 

 here and elsewhere, the Okapi, far from being a degenerate Giraffe 

 is, in my opinion, a member of the Giraffidae which in various 

 respects has I'etained the characters of ordinary Ruminants. 

 It is a stage towards the Giraffe, slightly less primitive than 

 Samothermm, and occupying, on the whole, a perfectly intermediate 

 position between the latter and the true recent Giraffes, which 

 are an extreme. 



Mr. Edward J. Bles, F.Z.S., exhibited young tadpoles of 

 Xenopus Icevis Daud., the Cape Clawed Frog, under the microscope, 

 to demonstrate the remarkable transparency of the head and the 

 method of ingesting food, hitherto unknown in the Amphibia. 

 The results obtained by Mr. F. E. Beddard (P. Z. S. 1894, p. 101) 

 were confirmed. The presence of pectoral lymph-hearts from a 

 very early stage and the absence of blood-vessels in the tail-fin of 

 the young tadpo^le were briefly referred to. 



Mr. Lydekker exhibited the mounted head of a male Siberian 

 Wapiti, C'ervus canadensis asiaticus (Severtzoff), shot by Mr. J. 

 Talbot Clifton in North Siberia. This ¥/apiti appeared to be 

 entitled to subspecific distinction from the Thian-Shan Wapiti, 

 C. G. songaricus, since the dark markings on the muzzle were 

 different, and there also seemed to be certain differences in the 

 antlers, which in the specimen exhibited had a relatively small 

 spread, although they were very massive. In this connection 

 Mr. Lydekker alluded to the head of a Wapiti from Chenkend 

 (? = Chimkent), Turkestan, lately presented by the President to the 

 British Museum. This specimen (No. 2.3.19.1) differed from both 

 the Canadian and the Thian-Shan Wapitis by the whole margin of 

 the upper lip being light- coloured, instead of only the front portion 

 and a patch beside the nostrils, and also by the circumstance that 

 the dark patch on each side of the lower lip did not extend down- 

 wards to join a larger patch on the chin, which in this specimen was 

 uniformly light-coloured. Similar features occurred in the Deer 

 from Turkestan to which the name Gervus hactrianus had been 

 applied by Mr. Lydekker in 1900. And although that Deer had 

 been regarded as allied to the Shou, Mr. Lydekker now believed 

 its antlers were abnormal, and that it was really a Wapiti. This 

 being so, the British Museum specimen probably belonged to the 

 same form, which might be known as the Turkestan Wapiti, 

 C. canadensis hactrianus. It was added that as the " moustache- 

 mai-kings " were constant in the different forms of Roe, they 

 probably were likewise so in the Wapiti group. They were more 

 convenient to describe than the antlers, although these also 

 appeared to differ in the various Asiatic races of Wapiti. 



