1842.] Asiatic Society. 97 



in the hope of inducing some investigation as to whether the Indian species may not 

 participate in the same propensity; nothing of the sort (that I am aware) has hitherto 

 been observed, or at least published, concerning it, nor from the skulking habits of the 

 animal does it appear to have been much noticed in many districts where it is certainly 

 found. In Ceylon, it is as common as Hares are in England; the natives trap great 

 numbers of them in the interior of the island, and bring them almost daily to market 

 in Colombo and other towns, where they sell for about a rupee each, and are esteemed 

 very delicate-eating. In Colonel Sykes's list of the Mammalia of the Dukhun 

 (P. Z. S. 1831, 104), it is mentioned that " considerable numbers exist in the dense 

 woods of the Western Ghauts, but they are never found on the plain." Mr. Walter 

 Elliot, in his ' Catalogue of Mammalia in the Southern Mahratta Country' (Madras 

 Journal, No. xxv. 220), notices it as " common in the forest, and even occasionally 



by Mr. Ogilby) states that " it is very similar to the Roe, having long projecting tasks, 

 and horns of a straight form or slightly pushed back ;" so, also, in Bell's Travels 

 in Tartary (i, 224), we read that—" The Kabenda is a size less than the Fallow Deer, 

 and its colour dark. It is of a pretty shape, having erect horns without branches; is very 

 swift, and haunts rocks and mountains of difficult access to men and dogs; and, when 

 hunted, it jumps from cliff to cliff with incredible celerity and firmness of foot. The 

 flesh is esteemed better venison than any of the Deer kind of larger size, of which 

 there is a great variety in these parts [neighbourhood of Elimsky. ] This is the 

 animal from which the drug called musk is taken * * *. There are many of them 

 in this country, but the musk is not so strongly scented as that which comes from 

 China. The General had bred this creature to be very familiar. He fed it at his table, 

 with bread and roots; when dinner was over, it jumped on the table, and picked 

 up the crumbs. It was pleasing to observe its gambols, playing with the children like 

 a kid." With such opportunities, accordingly, for observation, it is very unlikely that 

 the traveller should be mistaken in what he avers concerning its " horns." 



I may remark here, that in an account of the anatomy of a " cis- Himalayan" Musk, 

 by A. Campbell, Esq. published in Jour. As. Soc. vi., 119, the presence of a gall 

 bladder is noted, "of an oval shape, pendulous from the right half of the liver, and 

 three inches long, by two inches and a half in diameter." Whether this viscus was 

 found to exist by Professor Pallas, who furnishes an account of the anatomy 

 of (I believe) a Tartarian specimen, I do not remember to have noticed, and 

 have not now the work to refer to : the Chevrotains have none ; and the existence or 

 non-existence of a gall-bladder has generally been considered as an invariable distinc- 

 tion between the two great divisions of hoofed ruminants, being absent in the Cervine 

 group ; hence its occurrence in a true Moschus is remarkable, but it is well to quote 

 the following from Professor Owen's elaborate description of the internal conforma- 

 tion of the Giraffe {Trans. Zool. Soc. ii. 227-8.) 



" As the presence of a gall-bladder distinguishes the hollow-horned from the solid- 

 horned ruminants, the investigation of this point in the anatomy of the Giraffe was 

 attended with much interest; and the result of an examination of three individuals 

 shews how necessary it is not to generalize on such a point from a single dissection. 



"In the first Giraffe, (a female, ) i found a large gall-bladder, which presented 

 an unusual structure, being bifid at its fundus * * *. In the two males afterwards 

 examined, there was not a vestige of a gall-bladder, but the bile was conveyed by 

 a rather wide hepatic duct to the duodenum. I conclude, therefore, that the absence 

 of a gall-bladder is the rule, or normal condition ; and that the Giraffe in this respect, 

 as in the structure of its horns, bears a nearer affinity to the Deer than to the 

 Antelopes." Nor is this the only instance wherein an irregularity of conformation hes 

 been observed with respect to the presence of a gall-bladder: thus, in the class 

 of birds, the French Academicians failed to detect it in four out of six specimens of the 

 Demoiselle Crane, (Grus virgoj ; nevertheless, such instances of irregularity are 

 extremely rare, and extensive groups are characterized (among other particulars) 

 by the seemingly constant presence or absence of a receptable for the secretion of the 

 liver, which it would be out of place here to particularize; my object has been 

 to call some further attention to the subject as regards the true Musks, the affinities 

 whereof induce a suspicion that the case recorded by Mr. Campbell will prove 

 to be exceptional or abnormal, as adjudged by Mr. Owen to have been the fact in the 

 instance of his first Giraffe. — Cua. As. Soc. 



