1875.] some Indian Ruminants. 13 



By many old writers, however, it was supposed that the bezoar was 

 procured from a kind of antelope, and Linnseus confounded the wild goat 

 of Persia, the Pa-sang (rock-footed), with the Persian gazelle, the horns 

 of which apparently were described by him as those of his Capra hezoartica. 

 The first author who gave a clear account of the bezoar goat was S. G. 

 Gmelin, frequently called the younger Gmelin, who obtained a specimen 

 in the Elburz mountains of Northern Persia close to the southern coast of 

 the Caspian Sea. He, however, erroneously stated that the females have 

 no horns. A head and horns procured by Gmelin were sent to St. Peters- 

 burg and carefully described and figured under the name of JEgagrus by 

 Pallas in his Spicilegia Zoologica, Fasc. xi, pp. 43-49, tab. v, fig. 2, 3, 

 published in 1776. In this paper, which contains a description of Capra 

 Sibirica (or as Pallas terms it Ibex al/pium Sibiricarum), Pallas points out 

 that the JEgagrus is the apparent progenitor, in part at least, of the domestic 

 goat, a view which has been generally admitted. Indeed Gmelin in the 13th 

 edition of the Systema Nature united the tame goat, Capra hirciis, L., with 

 the JEgagrus of Pallas, under the name of Copra cegagrus. 



Schreber and other writers did little more than adopt the name Capra 

 cegagrus and copy Pallas's description and figures, which were repeated with 

 an additional representation of the skull and horn-cores in Pallas's Zoogra- 

 phia Eosso-Asiatica. The only difference shewn by these figures from the 

 ordinary horns of the Sind ibex is that, in the head figured by Pallas, the 

 horns are slightly curved towards each other near the tips, which is not 

 the case in most Sind specimens. But any one who has studied ruminants 

 knows that trifling variations of this kind occur, and that the difference is 

 of no importance is shewn by Hutton's remarking* that, out of five pairs 

 of horns in his possession, three were curved towards each other near the 

 tips, and two were not. He also saysf that some horns (of C. cegagrus~) are 

 turned inwards, others outwards, at the extremities. I think there can be 

 no reasonable doubt but that the Sind ibex is identical with C. cegagrus. 



It is quite unnecessary to enter further into the accounts of the animal 

 in various European works beyond pointing out the confusion which has 

 arisen about its name, and which has doubtless been the cause of its now 

 receiving an additional synonym. 



In the first Mammalian Catalogue published by the British Museum, 

 the ' List of the specimens of Mammalia' issued in 1842, the name Capra 

 cegagrus does not appear, but certain specimens, which are referred to Capra 

 Caucasica, are said to be those described by Col. Hamilton Smith, who was 

 one of the editors of Griffith's translation of Cuvier's ' Animal Kingdom'. 

 The references in the British Museum list under C. Caucasica are ; first : 



* Calcutta Jour. Nat. Hist. II., p. 541. t Ibid. p. 528. 



