A note, with which I have been favoured by Dr. Campbell (long the respected Superintendent of British Sikkim) says:  “Captain Smith, of the Bengal Army, who had travelled in Western Tibet, told me that he had shot many wild Yaks in the neighbourhood of the Mansarawar Lake, and that he measured a bull which was 18 hands high, i.e. 6 feet.  All that he saw were black all over.  He also spoke to the fierceness of the animal.  He was once charged by a bull that he had wounded, and narrowly escaped being killed.  Perhaps my statement (above referred to) in regard to the relative size of the Wild and Tame Yak, may require modification if applied to all the countries in which the Yak is found.  At all events, the finest specimen of the tame Yak I ever saw, was not in Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet, or Bootan, but in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris; and that one, a male, was brought from Shanghai.  The best drawing of a Yak I know is that in Turner’s Tibet.”

[Lieutenant Samuel Turner gave a very good description of the Yak of Tartary, which he calls Soora-Goy or the Bushy-tailed Bull of Tibet. (Asiat.  Researches, No.  XXIII, pp. 351-353, with a plate.) He says with regard to the colour:  “There is a great variety of colours amongst them, but black or white are the most prevalent.  It is not uncommon to see the long hair upon the ridge of the back, the tail, tuft upon the chest, and the legs below the knee white, when all the rest of the animal is jet black.”  A good drawing of “an enormous” Yak is to be found on p. 183 of Captain Wellby’s Unknown Tibet. (See also Captain Deasy’s work on Tibet, p. 363.) Prince Henri d’Orleans brought home a fine specimen, which he shot during his journey with Bonvalot; it is now exhibited in the galleries of the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle.  Some Yaks were brought to Paris on the 1st April, 1854, and the celebrated artist, Mme. Rosa Bonheur, made sketches after them. (See Jour.  Soc.  Acclimatation, June, 1900, 39-40.)—­H.  C.]

Captain Prjevalsky, in his recent journey (1872-1873), shot twenty wild Yaks south of the Koko Nor.  He specifies one as 11 feet in length exclusive of the tail, which was 3 feet more; the height 6 feet.  He speaks of the Yak as less formidable than it looks, from apathy and stupidity, but very hard to kill; one having taken eighteen bullets before it succumbed.

[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 151, note) writes:  “The average load carried by a Yak is about 250 lbs.  The wild Yak bull is an enormous animal, and the people of Turkestan and North Tibet credit him with extraordinary strength.  Mirza Haidar, in the Tarikhi Rashidi, says of the wild Yak or kutas:  ’This is a very wild and ferocious beast.  In whatever manner it attacks one it proves fatal.  Whether it strikes with its horns, or kicks, or overthrows its victim.  If it has no opportunity of doing any of these things, it tosses its enemy with its tongue twenty gaz