292 PANTH.OLOPS HUNDESTENSTS. [Aug. I9OI, 



The horn-cores have also the same highly elliptical cross-section, 

 and the same general setting-on and upright direction : the long 

 axis of the ellipse being set very obliquely to the middle line of the 

 skull. In the fossil form the obliquity is indeed somewhat greater 

 than in the modern chiru, and the horn-cores at starting appear 

 to have been inclined a little forward instead of somewhat 

 backward. (See fig. 2, p. 291.) 



The result of this examination is thus to confirm my previous 

 opinion that the fossil Hundes skull indicates an animal nearly 

 related to the living chiru of the same region. And, for the 

 present at least, I think that it may well be left in the same genus. 

 The distinctive characters of the species, as compared with the 

 chiru, will be, of course, its smaller size, the forward inclination 

 of the basal portion of the horn-cores, and the greater obliquity of 

 their setting-on. 



In the paper already quoted I have given reasons for believing 

 that this and other fossil mammal remains from the same region 

 come from the horizontal deposits of Hundes, in which bones were 

 found by Mr. C. L. Griesbach.^ I also came to the conclusion that 

 these beds were probably not older than the Upper Pliocene, and 

 that they were deposited when the Hundes plain was approximately 

 at its present elevation. A further inference was that the animals 

 whose remains are found in these deposits must have lived after the 

 elevation of the Hundes plain to its present height of some 15,000 

 feet above sea-level. Among these animals is a rhinoceros ; and 

 although it seems impossible that such a creature could now exist 

 in Hundes, I have endeavoured to show that under somewhat 

 altered climatic conditions it might have been an inhabitant of that 

 desolate region. 



As the affinity of the extinct Hundes antelope to the modern 

 chiru of the same region seems to be now fairly well established (the 

 original determination having been provisional), I see no reasons for 

 departing in any respect from the position which I took up in 

 1881. 



1 Eec. Geo]. Surv. India, vol. xiii (1880) p. 91. 



