1847 ] Further Notice of the Species of Wild Sheep. 3G3 



Moufflon of Corsica. These two Himalayan species, instead of being 

 "complete Moufflons," are (so far at least as their horns are concerned) 

 most particularly unlike O. musimon, and form a little group per se, 

 unless O. cylindricornis should prove to range with them : and the 

 Moufflon is quite excluded from his definition of " round-horned" 

 Sheep, for which group I presume, the appellation Pseudois is pro- 

 posed. Their being "furnished with a well developed tail," (really 

 there is uo such marked difference in this respect,) will not exclude the 

 Californian Argali, the tail of which is described as " eighteen inches 

 long !" Yet the horns of this animal are most typically those of an 

 Argali (vide Taylor's plate) ! Mr. Hodgson suggests " the generic 

 appellation Pseudois, lest," he adds, " as has too often happened to me, 

 some closet systematizer, who never was at the pains to examine 

 nature for himself, should step in to * name and classify,' (the work of 

 a moment, as ordinarily done,) my discoveries."* But if any discovery 

 is claimed in the present instance, it remains to show in what it con- 

 sists : for Mr. Ogilby long ago remarked the absence of suborbital 

 sinuses in O. nahoor ; and the group formed by O. nahoor and O. 

 burrhel w r as distinctly indicated in my monograph (vide J. A. S., X, 

 867), being estimated there, as I still think, at its true value. Mr. 



* By the way, how is it that these complaints, so many times repeated, and bordering 

 somewhat on the querulous, should be altogether peculiar among- present cultivators of 

 Zoology to Mr. Hodgson ? Does Mr. H. complain of my having chanced to anticipate 

 him in the publication of Rhipidura hypoiantha and Mitscicapula hypetythra ? Or in first 

 discriminating in print the Ovis nahoor from 0. ammon ? — Or, supposing that 1 knew of an 

 animal of which I was well aware that Mr. H. possessed the female only, and that he was 

 waiting to procure a male in order to satisfy himself whether or not it differed from a 

 certain other species ; supposing in such a case that I were to intercept the male which 

 otherwise would have been transmitted to him, and immediately rush into print with a 

 description of both sexes and a " mihi" attached, and in that description were even to 

 refer to Mr. Hodgson's unpublished opinion respecting the species, which opinion he had 

 been cautious not to commit to print ! — Mr. Hodgson might perhaps be justified in say- 

 ing that I had been guilty of much discourtesy towards him, and have forfeited my 

 claim for courtesy in return ? Even such, mutatis mutandis, is the history of Antilope ( Pro- 

 capra) picticaudala, Hodgson ! Dr. Campbell kindly forwarded the female of this animal 

 some time ago to the Society's Museum, and hoped soon to be able to procure and send a 

 male ; but Mr. Hodgson happened to be at Darjeeling when Dr. Campbell succeeded 

 in procuring two males and a female, and has assuredly taken due (or undue) advantage 

 of the accident of his local position! Who here "steps in to name and classify" 

 &c. &CC.1 



