"Ceylon" usually attributed to T. Stanleyanus is without doubt

erroneous.

We now come to the Bovidæ, the last and most important family of Ruminantia, both as regards the number of its species, the size of many of them, and their importance to carnivorous Man, as affording him his principal sustenance. The Zebu or Bos indicus of Linnæus is a theoretical name for the species whence the numerous races of the humped cattle of Southern Asia and Africa were derived. Mr. Blyth considers it may have been originally derived from Africa. However this may be, certain it is that it is now unknown in the originally wild state, just as is the case with Bos taurus and Equus caballus, though " feral herds" of the Zebu are said to exist in Ceylon and in many parts of India. On the other hand, the Indian peninsula possesses a fine wild Bos in the Gaour or "Bison" of Indian sportsmen, (B. gaurus) which is found in suitable districts throughout the country, extending into Burmah and the Indo-Chinese region. The Gayal (Bos frontalis) is a second distinct Indian species, confined, however, to the hill-regions east of the Brahmaputra, and extending thence northwards to the Subhimalayan districts and southwards into the Tenasserim provinces. Unlike the Gaour the Gayal has become a quasi-domestic animal, although it appears only occasionally to breed in captivity. The Buffalo (Bubalus buffalus) is also a primeval inhabitant of the Subhimalayan forests, but although met with in a wild state in other suitable localities-the great swampy jungles of India-is considered by Mr. Blyth to have been introduced there.

The Antelopine series which we next encounter is, as is well known, African par excellence, some 60 or 70 species of this group being met with in various parts of the Ethiopian Region. In India, however, there are several animals, which, though mostly distinct from the African types, clearly belong to different parts of the same series. These are the Nylghai (Portax picta)—the Four-horned Antelope, Tetracerus quadricornis, and the Sasin (Antilope bezartica) all inhabitants of the peninsula of India-as is likewise the Gazella bennettii-the "Ravine Deer" of Indian sportsmen, a straggling outlier of the African genus Gazella. The MountainAntelopes, which form the transition between the Antelopinæ and the goats and sheep are, on the other hand, a group a group distributed over the northern regions of the two Hemispheres of which the well

known Chamois (Rupicapra tragus) is a somewhat aberrant European representative. Of this group two species of the genus Nemorhædus (N. goral and N. bubalinus) inhabit the southern slopes of the Himalayas, whilst a third, N. sumatrensis, extends up the Malayan peninsula as far north as the Tenasserim hills. Closely allied to Nemorhædus is the Budorcas taxicolor of Hodgson, a singular form of gnu-like aspect, which inhabits the Mishmi hills at the head of the valley of Assam.

Of the Goats the Capra hylocria of Ogilby (the so-called “Ibex" of the Nilgiris) is alone found in the peninsula of India. In the Himalayas we meet with C. jemlaica and C. sibirica, and in the Punjab saltrange and Kashmir with Capra megaceros. The Sheep (Ovis) can hardly be considered strict members of the Indian Fauna, although one species (O. cycloceros) occurs in the Sulimani salt-range of the Punjab, and two if not three others upon the heights of the Himalayas. Excluding, therefore, the extreme mountain-forms, which only occur on the highest ranges of the Himalayas, we shall have about fifteen species of the family Bovidæ, strictly appertinent to the Indian Fauna.

The Edentata are only represented in the peninsula of India by a single species of the genus Manis- the M. pentadactyla, replaced, however, in Sikhim and the Himalayas by M. aurita, Hodgson, which Mr. Blyth states to be conspicuously distinct from the preceding. As Marsupials are unknown to the recent Fauna of the Old World, except in Australia, we have now arrived at the termination of the Mammalian series, and can sum up the Mammals of the Indian Fauna in the subjoined table.

The Ant. goral of Hardwicke and A. bubalina Hodgson, have been made by Ogilby (P. Z. S. 1836, p. 138) the types of two distinct genera, Kemas and Capricornis, which have been adopted by subsequent systematists, but, as Mr. Turner remarks, (P. Z. S. 1850, p. 173), the genus is too well-marked in nature to admit of sub-division, and the oldest name for it is Nemorhædus, established by Hamilton Smith in 1827, (Griffith's edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, Vol. v.) with A. sumatrensis as its type. Other species of the group are N. swinhoii, Gray, of Formosa, (figured P. Z. S. 1862, pl. xxxv.) N. rubidus, Blyth, of Aracan, (if distinct from N. bubalinus), and the species described by Radde (Reisen in OstSiberien I. p. 262), which is probably different from the India N. gorul, as well as from the Japanese N. crispus.

† Ovis argali, O. nahoor and O. vignei.

It would thus appear that within the area of India and Ceylon, including the lower and middle ranges of the Himalayas up to the point where the great Palearctic Fauna which pervades Europe and

Northern Asia meets that of the Indian Region in its wide sense, and excluding the Malayan provinces on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, about 227 species of Mammals are met with. Amongst these are representatives of every one of the great orders of Mammals, except the Seals and Marsupials. The beasts of prey are very fully developed, and amongst them are the two largest and finest species of the typical genus Felis. The important order of Ruminants is also well represented, although not to the extent that it is in Africa, where the Antelope-group is very numerous.

But it is hardly fair to compare the country we have been speaking of with the huge continent of Africa. India, we must recollect, is but a portion of a great Zoological Region, which embraces not only the Indian peninsula and adjoining lands up to the Himalayas, but also the whole of South-eastern Asia, together with the great Islands of Java, Sumatra and Borneo and other islands up to the line through the Strait of Macassar, which Mr. Wallace has shown to be the boundary between this and the Australian Region. In any comparison with Africa this region should be taken in its entirety, and it is not our present purpose to enter upon such a wide field of discussion. It may suffice to say that the Indian Region, in its wide sense, is richly endowed with representatives of all the most highly organized forms of Mammals, and that whether we look at it as regards variety of forms and species or perfection of type, it is but little if at all inferior to the Ethiopian Region.

So much for the Mammals of our Indian dominions. The subject is a fertile one, and we have occupied so much space in discussing it that we are constrained to reserve our account of Dr. Jerdon's volumes on the Birds of India, and Dr. Günther's elaborate work on the Reptiles of the same country for another number.

* Journ. Roy. Geograph. Soc. Vol. xxxiii. p. 217.

II.-NORDMANN ON STELLER'S MANATEE.

BEITRÄGE ZUR KENNTNISS DES KNOCHEN-BAUES DER RHYTINA STELLERI, von Dr. Alex. v. Nordmann. Acta Soc. Sc. Fennica, Vol. vii. Helsingfors, 1861.

THE publications of the Finnish Society of Sciences are so little known in this country that we are sure our readers will thank us for some notice of the paper of which the title is above given, although it appears to have been published several years ago. The communication referred to contains an account of a newly discovered skeleton of the remarkable Sirenian Rhytina Stelleri, from the pen of Dr. Alexander v. Nordmann, the learned Professor of Zoology in the Imperial University of Helsingfors.

This large marine animal, formerly so abundant on the coasts of Bering's Island has, as is well known, now quite disappeared from the surface of the globe as a living animal, and even the date of the destruction of the last individual of the race has been ascertained with exactness.*

The original account of the Northern Sea-cow by Steller, which was published at Petersburg in 1751,† long remained our only authority on the subject, and for many years subsequently no specimen, nor even any portion of a specimen, of the Rhytina was known to exist in any collection. In 1832, Professor Brandt found among the

* The last Rhytina was killed in 1768, according to Sauer, the Secretary of Captain Billings' expedition. We may remark, that Professor Owen (Paleontology, p. 400), states that the extinction of this animal "does not appear to have been due to any special quest and persecution by man." This is, however, directly contrary to the conclusions arrived at by v. Baer in his learned article upon this subject, (Untersuchungen über den Nordischen Scekuh-Mém. Acad. S. Pet. vi. Ser. 1840, iii. p. 53, et seq.) Steller, who first discovered the Rhytina during Bering's second expedition in 1741, when ten months were passed upon Bering's Island, the only spot where this remarkable animal is known to have existed in recent times, estimated its numbers as then so large as to be sufficient to feed the whole population of Kamtschatka. But the hunters and adventurers following in Steller's track along the chain of the Aleutian Islands, who were in the habit of wintering in Bering's Island, and of provisioning their ships with these animals, made such havoc with them, that, as we are informed by Sauer, in his narrative of Billing's expedition, which remained five years in these seas, from 1789 to 1793, they were at that time totally extinct, the last known individual having been killed in 1768.

De Bestiis marinis, auctore G. W. Steller, Nov. Comm. Petr. xi. p. 294, (1751).