.MAMMALS FROM CHINA IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE 

 UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



r>y A. Braziek Howell 



Collaborator, United States National Museum 



During recent years the attention of naturalists has been directed 

 more and more to the fauna of Asia. The great variation in climate 

 and topography have contributed in making this part of the earth's 

 surface a region of extreme interest and the inaccessibility of a con- 

 siderable portion of it has only stimulated our curiosity. That era 

 in the history of Asiatic zoology when the majority of species ob- 

 tained by an expedition proved to be new to science has largely 

 passed, although novelties have by no means been exhausted. The 

 time has come when an attempt should be made to sort and arrange 

 what information we already have, to scrutinize the known species 

 and establish their interrelationship, to correlate their ranges with 

 what we know of fa anal areas, and to bring as much order out of 

 paTtial chaos as present circumstances permit. 



The United States National Museum has accumulated from vari- 

 ous sources a collection of Chinese mammals that is large and of ex- 

 treme interest, and it seems eminently suitable that a report relating 

 to it should be published at this time. The purpose of this may be 

 said to be twofold: to present additional information concerning the 

 mammals of regions that have been but imperfectly known; and to 

 make available to students of Chinese mammalogy, who are not in 

 .'ontact with large collections and libraries, some of the information 

 which they may require. 



The Chinese collections of the National Museum include adequate 

 series of quantities of genera and species. Others, howev^er, are repre- 

 sented by so few or such unsatisfactory specimens that in the absence 

 of comparative material identification can at times be but provisional. 

 In the case of the carnivores, espec-ially, variation is frequently very 

 great and nev>' races in the greatest profusion as well as confusion 

 have been described from very scanty material, often the flat pelt 

 of a native himter from no one knows exactly where. When such 

 a condition is further complicated by a vague description, all one 



No. 2772.— Proceedings U. S. National T/Iuseum, Vol. 75, Art. 1. 



21776—29 1 1 



