The tahr of the Himalayas is a very different-looking animal from the true goats, from which, among other characters, it is distinguished by the form and small size of the horns. The horns, which are black, spring in a high backward arch, but the creature has no beard. A buck stands sometimes as much as thirty-eight inches high at the shoulder. It has a long, rough coat, mainly dark stone-color in tint. These animals live in the forest districts of the Middle Himalayas, where they are found on very high and difficult ground. General Donald Macintyre shot one standing on the brink of an almost sheer precipice. Down this it fell, and the distance in sheer depth was such that it was difficult to see the body even with glasses. The tahr is fairly common all along the higher Himalayan Range. Its bones are believed to be a sovereign cure for rheumatism, and are exported to India for that object. A smaller kind is found in the mountains of Eastern Arabia, where very few, even sportsmen, have yet attempted to shoot them. THE NILGIRI TAHR, OR NILGIRI IBEX Though not an ibex, the sportsmen of India early gave this name to the tahr of the Nilgiri and Anamalai hills. The Himalayan species is covered with long, shaggy hair; the South Indian, has short smooth brown hair. "The ibex," says Hawkeye, the Indian sportsman, of this animal, "is massively formed, with short legs, remarkably strong fetlocks, and a heavy carcass, short and well ribbed up, combining strength and agility wonderful to behold. Its habits are gregarious, and the does are seldom met with separate from the flock or herd, though males often are. The latter assume, as they grow old, a distinctive appearance. The hair on the back becomes lighter, almost white in some cases, causing a kind of saddle to appear; and from that time they become known to the hunters as the saddlebacks of the herd, an object of ambition to the eyes of the true sportsman. It is a pleasant sight to watch a herd of ibex feeding undisturbed, the kids frisking here and there on pinnacles or ledges of rock and beetling cliffs where there seems scarcely safe hold for anything much larger than a grasshopper, the old mother looking calmly on. Then again, see the caution observed in taking up their resting or abiding places for the day, where they may be warmed by the sun, listening to the war of many waters, chewing the cud of contentment, and giving themselves up to the full enjoyment of their nomadic life and its romantic haunts. Usually, before reposing, one of their number, generally an old doe, may be observed gazing intently below, apparently scanning every spot in the range of her vision, sometimes for half an hour or more, before she is satisfied that all is well, but, strange to say, seldom or never looking up to the rocks above. Then, being satisfied on the one side, she follows the same process on the other, and eventually lies down calmly, contented with the precautions she has taken.