1842.] Asiatic Society. 453 



Bos Gaurus. — The specimen prepared for mounting, as noticed in my last monthly 

 Report to the Society, has since arrived, in a condition sufficiently uninjured to render 

 it probable that we shall be able to set it up, — an undertaking which is now in progress. * 

 The only portions injured are the forehead, which unfortunately has been partly denud- 

 ed of its hair, and the back of the neck, which latter will however not be very observa- 

 ble in the stuffed specimen. If we succeed to my anticipations in mounting this enor- 

 mous animal, it will certainly forma highly attractive object in the Society's Museum, 

 and it will be the first example of the species which has been thus set up in any col- 

 lection, as our skeleton of the same beast is likewise the first, and I believe still the 

 only one, that any institution can boast of. Our late Honorary Curator, Dr. Evans, 

 took with him, however, two skeletons of female Gaours to England, but had not 

 succeeded in disposing of them when I left that country. 



Manis pentadactyla, Lin. : a specimen remarkable for the unusual degree to which 

 its hard scales have been worn down, probably from the narrowness of the rocky crevice 

 that may be supposed to have led to its customary retreat, as those of the croup are 

 thus ground away to the greatest extent. Moreover, the animal had lost one of its hind 

 limbs, in consequence of which part of the weight of its body fell on the corresponding 

 side of the tail, so that the series of lateral caudal scales on that side are so much rub- 

 bed away, that a sectional view of them is exhibited, wherein the expanded inferior 

 surface no longer exists, and the apical point of each scale is considerably above and 

 extends laterally beyond the side-angle. The general colour of this specimen is 

 browner, or less glaucous, than is usual in the species. 



Our Museum contains two other strongly characterized species of (presumed) 

 Oriental Pangolin, of which one is, I suspect, undescribed. 



For a long while, two species only were generally recognised of this genus, — the 

 Long-tailed and Short-tailed Pangolins, or Manis tetradactyla and M. pentadactyla, 

 Auctorum, which Cuvier was the first to refer distinctly to the continents of Asia and 

 Africa respectively. The judicious Pennant, however, in the last edition of his 

 ' Quadrupeds,' referred to an animal killed in Tranquebar, as described and figured in 

 the 60th Volume of the ' Philosophical Transactions,' as probably representing a 

 distinct species, which I think there can be no reasonable doubt of. M. Desmoulins has 

 also described one, in his ' Mammalogie,' as M. Javanica : and the Cape species has 

 been distinguished by Mr. Smuts, in the ' South African Journal,' as M. Tern- 

 minckii, since more fully described and compared with its then known congeners by 

 the late accomplished Secretary to the Zoological Society, Mr. Bennett, in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society', 1834, 81. Mr. Hodgson, next, described the Ne- 

 palese species as distinct from the currently admitted Indian one, by the appellation M. 

 auritus, in the Journal of this Society, V. 234 ; but it is clear that he misappre- 

 hended the meaning of the description of the Indian species in Griffith's Catalogue, 

 where the expression " eleven longitudinal series" of scales is intended to signify the 

 central and successive lateral ranges, counting obliquely down each side of the body. 

 The identification of Mr. Hodgson's alleged species with the ordinary Short-tailed 

 Pangolin, Auctorum, has already been announced by Mr. Ogilby, in the Zoological 

 Memoir annexed to Dr. Royle's ' Illustrations of the Botany, &c. of the Himalaya 



* And which has succeeded beyond expectation. — E. B. 



