1840.] 



Mammalogy of the Himalayas. 



169 



Aristotle, and takes considerable pains to prove it.* Against this op'ni- 

 on of the most distinguished of modern naturalists, however, I have to 

 urge objections as grave as those which lay against the ancient error 

 which identified the Hippelaphus with the Stag and Elk. In the first 

 place, as I have just shown, the fancied similarity of the horns of 

 the Hippelaphus to those of the Roe-buck, arises from a false translation 

 of the word Dorcas ; when this term is properly translated. Gazelle, the 

 horns of the Hippelaphus, to be similar to those of the Dorcas, should 

 be small, round, diud without branches ;^^Mch. are the horns of iVeeZ- 

 ghau, and such are not the horns of the Saumer. In the second 

 place, the Saumer Deer has certainly longer and stiffer hair on the 

 neck than elsewhere, but it is equally long and rough over the 

 whole neck, as well on the sides as above and below, and has no resem« 

 blance whatever to the mane of the Horse and Mule to which 

 Aristotle compares it. In fact the description of Aristotle does not 

 apply to it in any particular. The Saumer does not show the least ap» 

 pearance of the thin mane along the top of the neck, longest and thickest on 

 the shoulders ; neither has it anything that can be called a beard, distinct, 

 at least from the general roughness of the neck which Baron Cuvier calls 

 its mane. But even allowing the rough hair on the under surface to be 

 called a beard, still Aristotle's description does not appl}'^, for this rough 

 hair covers the whole throat in the Saumer from the head to the chest, 

 whilst the Greek philosopher restricts the beard of the Hippelaphus 

 to the Larynx, and this is precisely the situation in which the long bunch 

 of coarse hair, nearly a foot in length, is found on the throat of the Neel- 

 ghau. In fact there is not a single point, even to the most minute par- 

 ticular, the habitat of Arachosia, for instance, the modern Punjab, where 

 the Neel-ghau is extremely abundant, and where the Saumer does not 

 exist, at least we have no evidence of the fact, — in which Aristotle's de- 

 scription of the Hippelaphus does not perfectly agree with this now well" 

 known animal ; and we may therefore safely conclude that we have at 

 length finally settled a question which has long puzzled both critics and 

 Zoologists. The Neel-ghau should consequently assume in future the 

 specific appellation of Anlilope Hippelaphus, whilst the gJaumer Deer, 

 to which that name has been erroneously applied, may he more appro- 

 priately called Cervus Saumer. 



Two distinct species of the genus Capra occur in the Himalayas: 

 Capra jemblaica of Hamilton Smith, called Jharal in Nepal, and Thar 

 in the British provinces, is by far the more common of the two, and is 



* Oss. Foss. IV. 42, 



