1887.] MR. A. O. HUME ON BUDORCAS TAXICOLOR. 485 



The pair figured (and I have seen one larger) measure (along the 

 curve outside from base to tip) : — Length 12'5 ; basal girth 9'25 ; 

 spread 12 ; and have their bases 2 inches apart. They are actually 

 larger horns tlian some of the other (supposed adult) form. 



Is Blyth likely to have been mistaken ? At the time he wrote no 

 one knew anything of the beast ; to this day no European, in this 

 part of the world at any rate, has shot it. All he had to go on were 

 the rough skins brought down by the Mishmees. I have examined 

 over a dozen such, and not one has left on it any trace of the sex of 

 the animal to which it belonged. Either he guessed, judging by the 

 analogy of the Serow, in which the horns of both sexes are very 

 similar, or he was misinformed by those who sent the skin down. 



But about Mr. Milne Edwards ? He figures as an adult male of 

 this species an animal with horns of our No. 3 type, and which, if 

 the species he deals with be really the same as ours, must belong to 

 the young, if Blyth is right, or to a female, if I am correct. But I 

 attach less weight to this, because, on plate 68 of the same volume, 

 he figures also as a 7nale what, judging from the horns, must, I think, 

 be an old fetnale of the Bharal (Ocis nahoor^). 



But is his species of Gnu-goat the same as ours ? Certainly not, 

 if his plate be reliable. I have examined 13 skins of animals of 

 different ages, and exhibiting all three types of horns, and in not one 

 was the head coloured as he figured it. In his figure the entire face 

 and cheeks and sides of the head are a light yellow dun, only on the 

 nose is a strongly contrasting black patch. In our Mishmee Hills 

 Gnu-goat, the entire face, cheeks, sides of head, chin, and throat 

 are black or blackish, only just at the base of the horns is a little 

 brownish hair intermingled, or in one or two cases a small dark 

 brownish patch appears. I have found many horns intermediate 

 between 1 and 2, but not one in any degree intermediate between 2 

 and 3. 



I believe that there is no doubt, despite anything previously 

 written anywhere to the contrary, that my first figure represents the 

 horns of an adult, but not ver]/ large, male, my second those of a 

 younger, but not very young, male, and my third those of a fine old 

 female. 



It is worthy of note that, to judge from the skins, this latter was 

 a very much smaller animial than others with horns (of certainly, I 

 should say, no greater cubic contents) of the other type, and this is 

 exactly what we should expect in the case of females and males of this 

 group. Of course the animal might grow ; but it is physically 

 impossible, it seems to me, for horns of the No. 3 type to grow into 

 smaller and wholly different-shaped horns of the No. 2 type. 



AVhether at an earlier stage the horns of the male and female 

 resemble each other more closely, and what the horns of the male 

 in its earliest stages are hke, my present materials do not enable me to 

 decide, but I soon hope to have a complete series. The smallest 



' That is, if the animal figured really be 0. nahoor; but it must be admitted 

 that I have never seen anj' male horns of this species at all like the plate, and 

 no female horns so thick and large. 



