34 
W. T. Blanford — Zoology of Sikkim. 
[No. 1, 
RODENTIA. 
Abctomts. 
Marmot holes were abundant around Momay, but I never caught sight 
of one of the animals. 
I was singularly unsuccessful in procuring specimens of small rodents ; 
• on several occasions I saw a rat-like animal with a short head, probably 
Neodon Sikkimensis, but I could never capture a specimen. 
? Arvtcola sp. In the stream at Momay Samdong, on one occasion 
I saw a “ water rat.” This also may possibly have been Neodon, as that 
animal is said to he fotuid at this elevation (15,000 feet), but it is not known 
to haunt streams. The animal I saw was swimming some distance beneath 
the surface, so much so that at the first glance I took it for a fish, but it 
soon came up and I could distinguish its form. It is scarcely necessary to 
say that my gun happened to he at an unusual distance, and not available. 
The water coming down from the Kinehinjhao glacier is icy cold, and it 
would be surprising to find a forest denizen like Neodon Sikkimensis in a 
glacier stream traversing a treeless region. I think it most probable that 
the animal I saw was either Arvicola amphibia, which is known to occur in 
Siberia, or some allied form, perhaps undescribed. It was certainly a much 
larger animal than Hodgson’s Mus JiydropMlus, which appears, moreover, to 
be a tropical or sub-tropical form. 
The absence of squirrels in the pine woods of Northern Sikkim is very 
remarkable. 
? Lepus Tibetanus, Waterhouse, P. Z. S., 1841, p. 7, and Nat. Hist. 
Mam. Yol. II, p. 58. 
L. oiostolus, Hodgs. J. A. S. B., Yol. IX, p. 1186. Hooker, Him. Journal 
Vol. II, p. 158. 
Hooker mentions the occurrence of slate-coloured hares with white rumps 
around Cholamu lake. I turned up two in one day in the Lachen valley 
near Kongra Lama pass, one of them about five miles on the Sikkim side of 
the frontier, so that if the Indian fauna is to he limited by the frontier of 
Tibet, this animal must be included in it. I doubt myself whether any 
of these Tibetan forms ought to be comprised in the Himalayan fauna; even 
Ovis Nahura is only a Tibetan form which strays into the higher ranges across 
the frontier. 
Until more specimens can be procured and examined, it is impossible to 
say how far the various Central and Northern Asiatic races of hares, belong- 
mg to the type of the European Lepus variabilis, should be distinguished. 
There are — L. variabilis, Pall., identical with the European species found 
throughout Siberia ; L. tolai, Pall., peculiar to the high steppes of Mongolia 
