1 LADAKH. 7
2 animals are speckled, fawn colour and white ; they are wonderfully
3 active and fleet, and utterly untameable.’* Though placed inal xvii,
4 under physical circumstances so widely ae at seem
5 to have much resemblance to the quagga which fif:quents the
6 burning wastes of Southern Africa. There are also various
7 quadrupeds vaguely described: wild goats, wild deer, ibexes,
8 and wild sheep; and besides these, marmots, and a few mu-
9 rine quadrupeds. Birds are not numerous. Ravens are large,
10 fierce, and powerful. The large chakor is a bird resembling a
11 partridge, but of the size of a guinea-hen. There are sparrows,
12 linnets, redbreasts, and larks. Waterfowl abound in the lakes.
13 The rivers teem with fish, which the superstition of the natives
14 does not allow them to molest. The domestic quadrupeds are
15 horses, yaks, cows, asses, sheep, goats, and dogs. The zho is a
16 hybrid between the male yak and the cow, and is very valuable
17 both for draught and burthen. Though prolific, its progeny dege-
18 nerates. The dogs of Ladakh resemble the Newfoundland breed, are
19 of a dark colour, large, fierce, and sagacious. The Purik sheep is
20 domesticated in every cottage, where it like a dog watches the
21 meals of the family for fragments of food. | It is very diminutive,
22 not being Jarger than acommon lamb of six months old, but has
23 a bulky carcase in proportion toits height. The flesh is excellent,
24 and the wool, which is clipped twice a year, is very fine. The ewe
25 produces twice a year. Moorcroft considers that it would be a eae oa
26 valuable addition to the cottage economy of Britain, where three aroorer. on the
27 could be more easily maintained than one cur dog. Ponehees
28 Ladakh has little timber; willows and poplars are planted
29 about every village, but there do not appear to be any trees of
30 wild growth. The sarsink, which appears to be identical with
31 the sanjit of Kashmir, the eleagnus® of botanical classification, is * Royle, Bot. of
32 ” Himalaya, 39.
33 * Our information respecting wild equine quadrupeds is very uncertain
34 and confused, probably in some measure because hybrids may have been
35 mistaken by travellers for unadulterated varieties. In a note on Hodgson’s
36 “ Mammals of Tibet,” and signed ‘‘ Cur. As. Soc.,’’ in Journ. As. Soc. Beng.
37 1842, p. 286, an opinion is set forth that the kiang is essentially a mountain
38 animal, and distinct from the wild ass so often met with in the waste plains of
39 Asia. Abbott, whose party chased and killed a wild ass in Khaurism, gives a Heraut ond Khiva,
40 description of it very different from that of the kiang of Gerard and Moorcroft. ! 227.
41 It was sluggish and slow, and instead of escaping by itsspeed, stood at bay,
42 and attacked the pursuers with its teeth and hoofs. He observes, ‘‘ the
43 quarry just killed was a veritable donkey.”