Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/59

 taining at least five which appear to be 'records' in their particular species, and many others which approximate more or less closely in dimensions to this standard.

"To particularize such specimens on the present occasion would be out of place, more especially as their dimensions are given in Mr. Rowland Ward's 'Records of Big Game.' It must accordingly suffice to state that among the species represented by unusually fine heads are the magnificent wild yak of Tibet, the chiru antelope, with its long V-shaped black horns, of the same area, the Mongolian, Yarkand, and Indian gazelles, the blackbuck of the plains of India, whose spiral horns are, perhaps, the most graceful of all Asiatic ruminants, the markhor goat and ibex of the Himalaya, the so-called ibex of the Nilgiris — which survives only as the result of special Government protection — the lordly gaur, or bison, as it is miscalled by sportsmen, of the Pachmarhi and other Indian hill-ranges, and the great buffalo of Assam. Of the latter animal, it may be mentioned, the Museum has long possessed the 'record' horns (and a wonderful 'record' at that), which were discovered during the eighteenth century in the cellar of a house in Wapping, and presented to Sir Hans Sloane, whose collections formed the nucleus of the British Museum. Wild sheep, too, are strongly represented, the chief species being the massive-horned Tibetan race of the argali, Marco Polo's sheep of the Pamir, whose horns, although less massive, form a longer and more open spiral, the smaller urial of the Punjab and Ladak, and the Tibetan bharal, which stands midway between sheep and goats.

"All the above belong to what naturalists call the hollow-horned ruminants, or those which alone carry true horns ; but the collection likewise includes some magnificent heads of deer, whose branching cranial appendages are properly designated antlers. Among