1845.] Rough Notes on the Zoology of Candaha?\ 349 



which I kept, having plenty of food to eat, slept almost throughout 

 the day, seldom venturing abroad until nightfall, when they became 

 very restless. They produce young about the end of March or be- 

 ginning of April, when the winter has passed away and the warm wea- 

 ther is setting in, bringing in its train numbers of quail and other 

 small birds on which the animal preys. 



The Afghans assert that they are never seen during winter, and that 

 although the summer is the season when they appear, they are never 

 abundant. This latter assertion I can take upon myself to contradict, 

 as they are far from scarce, for I have had during the summer 

 months more than a dozen specimens brought to me. 



If true that they are only found in summer, it is probably because 

 they remain in a state of somnolency during the winter. The Af- 

 ghans, however, are so little skilled in Natural History, and so addicted 

 to lying, that it is a matter of much difficulty at any time to gather 

 the truth from them. Some informed me that though the animal 

 was not seen around Candahar during winter, yet that they were 

 plentiful in the hills wherever there was good jungle cover, and that 

 in summer they wandered down to the plains. 



Now this assertion carries an error on the face of it, for an ani- 

 mal delighting in cold climates would not resort to the warm plains 

 in summer, nor would the inhabitant of a warm climate seek the hills 

 in winter. As therefore they only appear in the plains and valleys 

 during the summer, the probability is (if they do not migrate to the 

 south) that they remain dormant during the winter in holes and bur- 

 rows. The latter is indeed the most probable, for to the southward 

 the Candahar valley is bounded by the sandy desert which stretches 

 away from the Kojah Amram range of hills to beyond Herat, into 

 Persia. 16 



These animals emit the same disagreeable fetid odour which charac- 

 terises the genus. The body is long, slender, and extremely supple; 

 the loins appearing, as in the feline tribe, to be so loosely articulated, that 

 the hinder parts actually shake and totter whenever the animal puts itself 



16. The truth, I suspect, will prove to be that the Mustela sarmatica occurs at all 

 seasons, like its various congeners. Among the true Carnivora, I know only of the 

 genus Ursus which fairly hybernates. — Cur. As, Soc. 



