430 



SOME TIBETAN ANIMALS. 



China, such as Shansi and Kansii, where they have of late years been 

 collected by Mr. F. W. Styan, an English tea planter. Not that our 

 information with regard to the mammals of eastern Tibet depends 

 by any means solely on the collections made in Kansu and Shansi. 

 On the contrary, the great French missionary explorer, Abbe David, 

 succeeded many years ago in penetrating into the heart of the Moupin 

 district of eastern Tibet, whence he brought back a number of mam- 

 mals belonging to types previously unknown to science. Practically 

 all that has resulted from subsequent exploration and collection is to 

 prove the extension of the range of these peculiar types into western 

 China, and to add to them a few species differing onh^ in compara- 

 tively trivial features. The absence of any distinctly new ty])es in 

 this w^est Chinese fauna seems to point to the improbability of any 

 striking novelty among the larger types of animal life remaining to 

 be discovered in Tibet. 



Of the strange animals first brought from eastern Tibet by Abbe 



David, and subsequently obtained 

 by Mr. Styan in western China, by 

 far the most remarkable is the crea- 

 ture now known to naturalists as 

 the great panda {.Ehiropus mela- 

 /wlcuci/s), although at one time de- 

 nominated the particolored bear 

 (fig. 1). In appearance this ani- 

 mal is, indeed, strangel}' bear-like, 

 although far inferior in bodily size 

 the rudimentary tail, plantigrade 

 feet, short ears, and broad head being all ursine features. Moreover, 

 it is not a little remarkable that a species of true bear {Ui^hus priiin- 

 osus) inhal)iting Tibet not infrequently presents a type of coloration 

 approximating to that of the great panda, in which the legs and 

 underparts, together with a band across the shoulders and a ring 

 round each eye, are sooty black, while all the rest is pure white. On 

 the other hand, when the face of the great panda is compared Avith 

 that of the much smaller and long-tailed arboreal animal inhabiting 

 the eastern TTimalaya. and known as the true j^anda {.■Elurus fnl- 

 gens), a marked resemblance can be detected, and when careful com- 

 parison between the teeth and skeletons of the two animals is made, it 

 becomes apparent that the great panda is much more nearly related 

 to the long-tailed species than it is to the bears. In fact, these two 

 animals appear to be the Old World representatives of the raccoons 

 and coatis of America, and thus afford one more instance of the close 

 affinitv existing: between the faunas of eastern Asia and North Anier- 



Fig. 1.— Great panda. 



to most members of the Ursida 



