114 W. T. Blanford— On the species of Marmot [No. 3, 



and " A.fulvus, Eversmau" to A. bobac of Sehreber. There is no evidence 

 that these species had ever been compared, and the only specimen stated to 

 exist in the British Museum at the time was said to be from Siberia. 



The next addition to the nomenclature was by Jacquemont, who de- 

 scribed a marmot from the range north of the Kashmir valley as A. cauda- 

 tus. His description was published, with a figure of the animal, in the 

 appendix by Geoffroy St. Hilaire to Jacquemont's posthumous work, the 

 ' Voyage dans 1' Inde,' in 1844. 



In the ' Catalogue of the specimens and drawings of the Mammalia and 

 Birds of Nepal and Thibet presented by B. H. Hodgson, Esq. to the British 

 Museum,' the larger or short-tailed marmot is called A. bobac, Grmelin, and 

 the smaller A. Tibetanus, Hodgson. The same names are preserved in the 

 second edition of the catalogue issued in 1863. 



In 1847 the " large Himalayan marmot" was described by Dr. Jame- 

 son as Arctomys Tataricus. This description appears to have been over- 

 looked by Indian naturalists. 



In 1851, Horsfielcl in his ' Catalogue of the Mammalia in the Museum 

 of the Hon. East India Company' classed both A. Simalayanus and A. cau* 

 datus as synonyms of A. bobac. 



Omitting several notices of the various Himalayan marmots by travel- 

 lers, the next noteworthy attempt at discriminating the species was by 

 Adams in 1858. He called the " red marmot" of Kashmir A. bobac, and 

 the " white marmot" A. Tibetanus. It is evident, I think, that most writers 

 apply the name A. bobac to Adams's " white marmot." 



Blyth in his catalogue (1863) united all the Himalayan marmots under 

 A. bobac, Sehreber, giving as synonyms Mus arctomys, Pallas (which is the 

 original name of A. bobac), A. fulvus, Eversman,^i. Tibetanus, Simalayanus 

 and Semachalanus, Hodgson (the last with a note of interrogation, however), 

 and A. caudatus, Jacquemont. In a foot note Blyth points out the dis- 

 tinctions between Hodgson's two supposed species, but adds that he cannot 

 satisfactorily discriminate two species in the Society's skins and skulls. Dr. 

 Stoliczka* in 1865 was also disposed to unite the two forms found in the 

 western Himalayas, but he gave no details. 



Jerdon, in his ' Mammals of India,' considered that Hodgson was correct 

 in separating A. Hemachalanus from the short-tailed form and, consequently, 



probably J. A. S. B., X, 1841, p. 978, where mention is made by Dr. Griffith of a 

 marmot, the size of a beaver, found at between 11,000 and 12,000 feet in Afghanistan, 

 at the Hageeguk, Kaloo, and Erak passes. Of this animal no specimens appear ever to 

 have been described, but, as I shall subsequently shew, there is a skull, probably from 

 Afghanistan, in the Society's old collection. 

 * J. A. S. B. XXXIV, p. Ill, note. 





