80 J. Wood- Mason — New B,odent from Central Asia. [Afril, 



habitations and have formed part o£ one people who must have at that ear- 

 ly period spoken a tongue neither distinctly Persian nor distinctly Indian, 

 but containing in itself germs of both forms. 



As a chain of dialects connects on the one side the Dards with the 

 Hindi speakers of the Panjab, and on the other the Ghalchahs with the 

 Iranian populations of Central Asia and Persia, the two lines culminating 

 and meeting at the Hindu-Kush watershed j it is suggested that per- 

 haps they mark the tracks by which Indians and Persians migrated to 

 their present seats ; and that Ghalchahs and Dards are perhaps the direct 

 descendants of that portion of the Indo-Persic race which remained near 

 its early home. Also that although the dialectic tendencies which 

 resulted in the formation of the two distinct languages, Persian and Hindi, 

 have operated on Ghalchah and Dardu respectively, yet the nautual resem- 

 blances still subsisting between them indicate that the ancestors of the 

 tribes speaking those dialects must have remained together till a later 

 period than the other members of the two great branches of the Arian 

 family, the Persic and the Indie. 



2. Description of a new 'Rodent from Central Asia. — 

 £i/ James Wood-Mason, Esq. 



Nesokia Scullti. 



Fur fine and silky ; above pale fawn-coloured paling on the sides ; below, 

 on the insides of the limbs, on the throat, lips, and cheeks, whitish : the hairs 

 of the back bemg very dark slaty tipped with very pale favra, and those of 

 the under parts much paler slaty tijDped with whitish. Face brownish grey. 

 On the back, especially on the sacral region, some hairs longer but hardly 

 coarser than the rest represent the coarse, flattened, spindle-shaped, grooved, 

 and projecting bristle-like ones observed in Spalacomi/s ( = JVesokia) In- 

 diaus and some other species : these hairs have a dark brown or blackish 

 ring intervening between the slaty basal and the pale fawn apical portion. 

 One or two of the vibrissas reach the bases of the ears, two or three of them 

 are black to the tips, most of them are tipped with white, a fringe of short 

 stiff silvery ones on the upper lips. Ears short, scarcely projecting beyond 

 the fm', all but naked, being sparsely clothed with an inconspicuous lanugo. 

 Hands and feet flesh coloured, with a scanty covering of short hairs. Tail 

 without a smgle hair, shorter than the body, obscurely scaled, the scales 

 arranged, as usual, in rings. 



The Turki name for the animal is ' Mioglii.'' 



Length from tip of the snout to the base of tail, . 168 millims. 



Length of tail, 132 „ 



,, „ ears (at back), ..... 12 „ 



Breadth „ „ (convex curvature), .... 11 „ 



