1847.] Further Notice of the Species of Wild Sheep. 365 



the data on which that name is sought to he established, and then 

 ludicrously complain of " innumerable vague and shadowy species" 

 being " the plague of zoological science." 



Filially, respecting Antilope picticaudata, Hodgson : having only 

 the skin of a female to judge from, I consider myself perfectly justified 

 in having provisionally regarded it as Antilope gutturosa of Pallas, 

 although I did not choose to go the length of publishing that opinion, 

 as Mr. Hodgson has done for me. In the first place, both animals 

 are from Chinese Tartary ; secondly, both differ from every other 

 known Antelope, excepting the Prong horn of North America, in 

 having a white caudal disk, as in the Argali Sheep, various true 

 elaphine Stags, &c. ; thirdly, the rest of the colouring of the Society's 

 specimen corresponds with the described summer dress of A. gutturosa ; 

 fourthly, their short tails are similiar ; fifthly, the females of both are 

 hornless; sixthly, as regards the size of A. picticaudata, how was I to 

 know that the female in the Society's museum was full grown, it having 

 no skull to guide me ; seventhly, A gutturosa is described to have 

 slight tufts of hair on the knees, scarcely sufficiently long to deserve 

 the name of brushes ; and though I could scarcely make these out 

 distinctly in the Society's specimen, I thought they might perhaps be 

 more developed in another ; and eighthly, the suborbital sinus in A. 

 gutturosa is described to be small, and I could merely distinguish a 

 small bare place in lieu of the sinus on both sides of the face of the 

 Society's specimen ; moreover, we know that this sinus becomes more 

 developed:' at the rutting season, and at other times it may be so slight 

 as to become obliterated in a dry skin. As for the swoln larynx, it is 

 as much peculiar to the male sex, as are the horns and prseputial gland ; 

 and even the larynx would, I doubt not, as in A. cervicapra, be much 

 more developed at the rutting season than at other times, and probably 

 the prseputial gland also. I should therefore have considered myself 

 altogether disqualified from assuming the tone which I now feel myself 

 entitled to hold, if I had added to the "innumerable vague and sha- 

 dowy species" which Mr. Hodgson so consistently denounces, by de- 

 scribing A. picticaudata as a species distinct from A. gutturosa, of 

 which, indeed, I am still very far from being satisfied, as I think it yet 

 requires to be examined in the recent state, and the males during the 

 height of the rutting period. 



3 c 



