Descriptions of East Asiatic Mammals 163 
are otherwise somewhat fox-like, although the legs and tail are 
proportionately shorter. 
The color is dull, a mixture of buff, gray, and black, with 
the back darker. The sides are buff, the underparts blackish, the 
feet blackish brown to chocolate-brown. The length of head and 
body is about 20 inches, of the tail 6% to 7 inches, of the hind 
foot 4% inches. Nyctereutes is reputed to inhabit grass and 
willow-covered flats and to make burrows in thickets near water. 
As many as 7 young may be born. At least part of the food eaten 
is fish. The typical race comes from near Canton and is dis- 
tributed through Fukien and Chekiang west to Szechwan. 
Osgood records a specimen from Tonkin. A mountain-dwelling 
form, N. p. orestes, occurs in the Likiang Range of Yunnan. 
Northward a race, N. p. ussuriensis, inhabits the Ussuri and 
Amur districts of eastern Siberia, reaching north to the latitude 
of the middle of Sakhalin Island (Ognev) ; N. p. koreensis lives 
in Korea, and N. p. viverrinus in Japan. 
the raccoons and the lesser panda 
(family procyonid^:) 
The two types of Pandas are commonly separated into two 
subfamilies or even two full families. In such case the Lesser 
Pandas typify the Ailurinse or Ailuridse. These animals, with 
the Bears and the very distinct Giant Panda, itself the sole 
representative of its family, form a group in which the molar- 
shaped teeth are all of crushing type and the sectorial teeth 
(shearing mechanism) are less developed. In the Procyonidae 
the tail is always a well-developed^ organ, slightly shortened in 
the Raccoons of America but never approaching atrophy as in 
the Bears and the Giant Panda. The colors are strongly con- 
trasting in the Lesser Panda and to a smaller degree in the 
Raccoons. (The Giant Panda also is strongly and contrastingly 
colored, though the Bears are not.) The members of the family 
are good climbers. The only Asiatic representative is Ailurus. 
