PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY DURING THE QUARTER. 241 



tiger, which is the type of all cats, has bat a few sharp cutting teeth which 

 work on each other like a pair of scissors. The bear has more molars, and 

 these with flat crowns, which enable him to grind his food instead of 

 chopping it. The tiger steps lightly on the tips of his toes, with his heel 

 well raised. The bear puts the sole of his foot down flat on the ground. 

 I show you here skeletons of the two animals which will explain what I mean. 

 Now to link the bears with the cats comes a little animal which I have 

 seen in Darjeeling called the wah or panda (Ailurus fulgens), the red bear-cat. 

 It is bat like in appearace and has semi-retractile claws, but anatomically it 

 is a bear, A larger animal has been found in Eastern Tibet by the Abbe 

 David, and has been called the Ailuropus, Only one of these curious creatures 

 has been discovered, and it is still more a link between cat and bear than the 

 other. The Ailuropus melanoleucos is about four to five feet in length. The 

 specimen secured measured 4' 10." It is bear-like, as you will see from the 

 rough sketch ; but it is only semi-plantigrade, and its skull exhibits both feline 

 and ursine characteristics; its dentition is feline as regards the premolars, but 

 the true molars are ursine. 



"The skull has also a considerable elevation of the occipital crest, and the 

 zygomatic arches are enormous, more so than in any other carnivorous animal : 

 both these are decidedly feline, as you will observe on looking at these skulls of 

 tiger and bear. 



" The racoons and the glutton link the bears on to the badgers and weasels, 

 and so on to the otters and sea-otters, and from the last We come to the marine 

 carnivora — the walruses and seals. The sea-otter, though not reckoned among 

 the marine carnipora, is quite as amphibious as a seal ; it is seldom seen on land, 

 though it keeps close in- shore. It has a curious way of floating on its back, 

 and can sleep in that position, and the females do so, holding their little ones 

 between their fore paws. 



" From these animals we begin to link on towards the whales. The out- 

 ward form begins to be fish-like, though the skeleton internally pre- 

 serves its mammalian character in full ; but the hands and feet lose their 

 graspiDg powers, and being enclosed in fiDgerless gloves and stockings, as it 

 were, become mere paddles for swimming. Nothing can be more awkward 

 than a seal or walrus on dry land, yet how graceful in the water. The 

 transition from a seal to a whale or a porpoise is easy to be understood, and 

 here is an argument against the development theory, which is generally 

 understood to be a progression from a lower to a higher standard. If such 

 transitions take place at all, it would be reasonable to Buppose that the porpoise 

 evolved from the seal, for it is not in the fitness of things for a whale or 

 a porpoise to go flopping about on dry rocks till the friction produced legs, 

 whereas we all know that the permanent disuse of any member will lead to its 

 deterioration ; and therefore if we are to have an evolution theory at all, let 

 us suppose that seals took to remaining in the water so long that having no 

 use for legs they left them off. In the cetaceans the upper portion of the 

 skeleton retains the normal mammalian form, but the rest is merely a verte- 

 bral column ; hind legs disappear entirely, although the rudiments of small 



