60 Farther Illustrations of the Antilope Hodgsonii. [Feb. 



The body is rather short and full : the neck of medial length and 

 bowed in : the head, nor long nor short ; of considerable vertical but 

 rather small transverse dimensions, except between the orbital ridges, 

 which being very prominent, give to the head, when measured between 

 them, a good breadth : the forehead sub-convex : the nose slightly 

 arched : the muzzle thick, dry, and hairy : the ears small, erect, 

 pointed, naked within, having a small quantity of longish soft hair 

 standing up around their orifices ; fully clad without, in close short 

 fur; no trace of striae on their interval surface: the tail shortish, 

 reaching to the buttocks only ; rounded, tapered pretty fully, and 

 uniformly covered with hair, of which that at the tip is a little pro- 

 longed, but not tufted : the limbs clean, long, slender, sinewy, covered, 

 like the head and ears, with close fine fur of an ordinary stamp, and 

 having no brushes on the knees : the pasterns, long and inclined : the 

 hoofs finely formed, compressed and hard ; before rather spread, and 

 padded behind : the false hoofs, mere callosities, but large. The 

 withers are lower than the croup ; the back nearly straight ; the 

 hind limbs stooped ; and the whole form, and accustomed attitudes 

 those of an extremely agile and swift animal. 



The hair of the body in general is of exactly the same character 

 with that of the Tibetan musk and Himalaya wild sheep, but consi- 

 derably finer and shorter than the hair of the former, and rather finer 

 and shorter than that of the latter. All three animals are similarly 

 furnished with a sub-fleece of fine wool ; which, however, is scanty in 

 all, and most so in theChiru. 



The hair spoken of is harsh, but feeble and brittle ; erect from the 

 skin, very thickly set on, of a hollow quill-like feel and look, undu- 

 lated throughout the greatest part, but the lips straight. 



The wool is, in the main, closely applied to the skin. A small 

 portion of it, however, insinuating itself between the interstices of the 

 close set hair, passes up half way to its point. The wavy structure 

 of the hair not only tends to keep the wool in close adaptation to 

 the skin, but, by the manner in which the salient bends of one hair 

 fit into the resilient curves of another, prevents as far as possible 

 the access of cold air to the skin in all the various movements of the 

 body. 



The peculiar clothing of these animals is, in all its characteristic 

 development at least, reserved for the cold season only ; the hair being, 

 in summer, of a nearly ordinary quantity and quality, and the wool 

 then scarcely discoverable. 



