Mr. Caldwell purchased for us in the market the skin of a splendid female serow and a short time later obtained a young male.  The latter was seen swimming across the river just below the city wall and was caught alive by the natives.  The female weighed three hundred and ten pounds and the male two hundred and ninety pounds.

Serows are rare in captivity and are said to be rather dangerous pets unless tamed when very young.  We are reproducing a photograph taken and kindly loaned by Mr. Herbert Lang, of one formerly living in the Berlin Zooelogical Garden; we saw a serow in the Zooelogical Park at Calcutta and one from Darjeeling is owned by the London Zooelogical Society.

Gorals are pretty little animals of the size of the chamois.  The species which we killed on the Snow Mountain can probably be referred to Naemorhedus griseus, but I have not yet had an opportunity to study our specimens carefully.  Unlike the serows these gorals have blackish brown tails which from the roots to the end of the hairs measure about 10 inches in length.  The horns of both sexes are prominently ridged for the basal half of their length and perfectly smooth distally.  The male horns are strongly recurved and are thick and round at the base but narrow rapidly to the tips; the female horns are straighter and more slender.  The longest horns in the series which we received measured six inches in length and three and three-quarters inches in circumference at the base.  Like the serows, gorals are confined to Asia and are found in northern India, Burma, and China, and northwards through Korea and southern Manchuria.

We hunted gorals with dogs on the Snow Mountain for in this particular region they could be killed in no other way.  There was so much cover, even at altitudes of from 12,000 to 15,000 feet and the rocks were so precipitous, that a man might spend a month “still hunting” and never see a goral.  They are vicious fighters, and often back up to a cliff where they can keep the dogs at a distance.  One of our best hounds while hunting alone, brought a goral to bay and was found dead next day by the hunters with its side ripped open.

On the Snow Mountain we found the animals singly but at Hui-yao, not far from the Burma frontier, where we hunted another species in the spring, they were almost universally in herds of from six to seven or eight.  It was at the latter place that we had our best opportunity to observe gorals and learn something of their habits.  We were camping on the banks of a branch of the Shwelie River, which had cut a narrow gorge for itself; on one side this was seven or eight hundred feet deep.  A herd of about fifty gorals had been living for many years on one of the mountain sides not far from the village, and although they were seen constantly the natives had no weapons with which to kill them; but with our high-power rifles it was possible to shoot across the river at distances of from two hundred to four hundred yards.