1850.] On the Tdkin of the Eastern Himalaya. 71 



of its superficial characters ; but before so doing we must notice the 

 colours of our animal, though this be a point of much less importance 

 than ordinary books of Zoology would lead their readers to imagine. The 

 entire body of the Takin, both superiorly and laterally, is of a yellowish 

 grey or Badger-colour, a circumstance whence we have derived its 

 specific name (Taxicolor). The whole head and neck, with most part 

 of the belly, the entire limbs and the tail, are black. Edge of the lips 

 paled. A black list down the spine. The quantity of the grey colour 

 of the body is variable, the whole animal being sometimes uniformly 

 black, owing to the absence of the grey hue, which hue results from 

 each hair (upon the grey parts) having its basal two-thirds, sordid yel- 

 low of a straw tinge, and its apical third, black. Hoofs, horns, and 

 nude margin of nostrils, jet black. Hair on the body, If to 2 inches 

 long ; on the neck below, 2f to 3 inches ; on the gullet, whence it depends 

 like a beard, 5 inches and more. Females resemble males in colour as 

 in characters ; but they are smaller and have horns of less size and 

 more or less mutually incurved towards their tips. The elongated hair 

 of the males is likewise much less conspicuous in them. 



The scull of the Takin is exceedingly massive and heavy, the whole 

 of the bones, having a thickness unparalleled in any Bovine animal I 

 have seen, with the single exception of the Gour or Bibos gaurus, an 

 animal whose scull likewise resembles that of the Takin, in the extreme 

 roughness of its whole surface. The Takin' s scull is distinguished by 

 a compression and elevation more proper to Ovis than to Bos, but 

 united with an elongation such as is found in the Bovines only. The 

 culminal line of the scull, is throughout greatly but not uniformly 

 curved, the uniformity of its arcuation, being somewhat interrupted by 

 the rather abrupt rise of the frontals between the cores of the horns 

 — a rise, however, not constituting a detached intercornual ridge, as in 

 the Gour, but only an abruptish ascent of the frontals between the 

 horns, somewhat in the manner of Ammon, and of other thick-horned 

 Ovines such as the Barwal. But in Ammon and Barwal, as in all 

 Bovines, the superior plane of the scull, together with its longitudinal 

 development, terminate with the intercornual crest, whereas in the 

 Takin, as in the Deer and Antelopes, though in a less degree, the 

 frontal and parietal bones are carried backwards behind the horns, so 

 as to constitute an ordinary encephalon upon the upper surface of the 



