ri
J
haunts of the old tahr, who climb with ease over ground where one would
hardly imagine that any animal would find a footing.” General Macintyre,1
whose account is likewise good, also bears testimony to the difficult nature
of the ground frequented by tahr “ This ruminant,” he writes, “ is plentifully
distributed over the precipitous rocky slopes just below the snow-line,
and is occasionally found on some of the higher parts of the middle ranges,
where, however, it appears not to attain the same size as it does in the
higher regions below the snow-line. I have never seen a more truly wildlooking
animal in the Himalayas than an old buck tahr, with his long
frill-like mane and shaggy coat of dark grayish-brown, short sturdy legs,
and almost black face. . . . An old buck stands over 3 feet at the shoulder.
The doe, called ‘ tehrug,’ is smaller, lighter in colour, and less shaggy,
with horns of the same shape, but much smaller than those of the
buck. The great old bucks herd separately during th e ,summer till
October, generally betaking themselves to the wildest and most unapproachable
places. Their colour is often so dark as, at a distance,
almost to look like black, more especially in the autumn. The flesh of
the tahr is considered by the hill-men to be a great medicine for fever and
rheumatism ; and shikaris often dry the flesh and sell it, and even the
bones, in places where fresh tahr-meat is not procurable.”
So bad is much of the ground frequented by these animals, that
specimens when shot frequently smash themselves into a pulp in their fall
down the frightful precipices. The pairing season takes place in the
winter months, and the kids, of which usually only one is produced at a
birth, are born in the following June or July, so that the period of gestation
would appear to be about six months.
In confinement tahr thrive well. They have been tried in the park at
Woburn Abbey, but some of the males developed the extraordinary habit
° f ripping open the fallow deer with their sharp horns, and consequently
1 Hindu-Koh, Edinburgh and London, 1891.
had to be destroyed. It is to this pernicious habit that the British Museum
owes the two handsome specimens now exhibited in the lower mammalian
gallery.
2 . T h e S iw a l i k T a h r — H e m i t r a g u s s i v a l e n s i s (Extinct)
Capra sivalensis, Lydekker, Paldorititlogia Indica (Mem. Geo/. Surv. Ind.),
ser. 10, vol. i. p. 169 (1878), Cat. Ftp . Mamm. Brit. Mus. pt. ii. p. 45
(1885):
Hemitragus sivalensis, Blanford, Fauna Brit. In d -—Mamm. p. 5°9 (1 891).
Characters.—Apparently very closely allied to the existing Himalayan
gB p e s , of which it may b,e merely the ancestral race. It is known by
two imperfect skulls with the horn-cores in the British Museum.
Distribution.—Norther®lndia during the Pliocene epoch.
3. T he A r a b ia n T ah r— H em it r ag u s ja y a k k r i
Hemitragus jayakeri, Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. -ser. 6, vol. xiii.
p. 365 (1894), /’roc. Zool. §oc, 1894, p. 452, pi. xxxi.
Hemitragus jaykeri, Ward, Records o f Big Game, p. 234 (1896)’.
Characters B e liz e small, the height at the shoulder being only about
24^ inches ; build comparatively light and slender. Pelage coarse, shaggy,
and brittle, the texture of the hai$$ being much more like that of some of
the larger species of sheep, or even the musk-deer, than that of the
Himalayan thar ; on the greater part o f the body the hair of medium
length, shorter than in the Himalayan, longer than in the Nilgiri
species; on the nape of the neck and the middle line of the fore part of
the back elongated into a mane, and the hair below the angles of the lower
jaw, as well as that on. the upper part of the fore- and hind-legs likewise
long, so that more or less distinct tufts are formed at the knees and hocks.
General colour pale sandy or whitish-brown, the mane on the back being