Persian Wild Goat 261
compressed, with the inner front edge (which is the only one developed)
sharp, keeled for some distance above the base, and above this bearing
several bold widely-separated knobsllon the inside nearly flat, externally
convex, behind rounded (3 tips generally convergent, but occasionally
divergent ; throughout faintly striated ; in colour nearly black. Beard
of male restricted to the chin, very long, and in old males occupying
the whole width of the chin, but in younger animals only the middle ;
together with the hair on the neck and shoulders, longest in winter, at
which season a soft under-fur is developed in the colder parts of the
animal’s habitat. General ground-colour of upper-parts brownish-gray
in winter, reddish-brown in summer, becoming paler in old males;
under-parts and inner sides of buttocks and thighs white or whitish ;
in adult and subadult males the face, a broad streak from the nape of
the neck to the root of the tail, the entire tail, a collar on the neck,
expanding to form a breast-plate below, the throat, chin, beard, the front
of the limbs, except the knees, and a stripe along the flanks separating
the brown of the back from the white of the under-parts and joining
the dark streak on the front of the thighs, dark blackish-brown, becoming
in some cases nearly black on the beard, face, and some other parts; knee
(carpus), the hinder and inner surface of the fore-leg below this, the hock
(tarsus), and the inner and hinder surface of the hind-leg below the same,
white or whitish.
Some amount,’ of individual variation is displayed in regard to the
extent of the black and white markings. Of several mounted specimens
in the British Museum, two old males, the one from Erzerum and the
other from Mount Ararat, are of very large size, and have the beard
extending the whole width of the chin. On the other hand, in a pair
of males from the Cilician Taurus the size is considerably less, and the
beard occupies. only the middle of the chin. It is doubtful i f these
differences are due to anything more than disparity of age. The difference