124 MamMALIA OF INDIA. 
GENUS AILUROPUS. 
This very rare and most curious animal should properly come between 
the bears and Az/urus, as it seems to form a link between the two. 
Such also is the idea of a naturalist friend of mine, who, in writing to 
me about it, expressed it as being a link between Helarctos Malayanus 
and Azlurus fulgens. Very little is, however, known of the creature, 
which inhabits the most inaccessible portions of a little-known country 
—the province of Moupin in Eastern Thibet. It was procured there 
by the Abbé David, who, after a prolonged residence in China, lived for 
nearly a year in Moupin, and he sent specimens of the skull, skin, Xc., 
to M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, from whose elaborate description in 
his ‘Recherches sur les Mammiféres’ I have extracted the following 
notice. The original article is too long to translate zz extenso, but I 
have taken the chief points. 
No. 168. AILUROPUS MELANOLEUCOS. 
Haspitat.—The hilly parts Moupin, Easter Thibet. 
DESCRIPTION.—The Az/uropus has a thick-set heavy form. His head 
is short, rather slender in front, but extremely enlarged in the middle 
and after part; the nose is small and naked at its extremity ; the 
forehead very large and convex; the eyes are small; the ears short, 
wide between and rounded at the ends; neck thick and very strong ; 
the body is squat and massive; the tailis so short as to be hardly 
distinguishable. ‘The feet are short, very large, nearly of the same 
length, terminated by five toes very large and with rounded ends, the 
general conformation of which recalls in all respects those of the bears, 
but of which the lower parts, instead of being completely placed 
on the sole in walking and entirely naked or devoid of hair, are 
always in great measure raised, and abundantly clad with fur to almost 
their full extent. 
On the hind feet can be noticed at the base of the toes a transverse 
range of five little fleshy pads, and towards the anteriorextremity of 
the metatarsal region another naked cushion placed transversely ; but 
between these parts, as wellas the posterior two-thirds of the planta, the 
hair is as abundant and as long almost as on the upper part of the foot. 
In the fore-limbs the disposition is much the same, though the meta- 
carpal cushion may be larger; and there is another fleshy pad without 
hair near the claws. 
The Az/uropus is thus an animal not strictly plantigrade, like the 
Bears in general, or the same as the Polar Bear, of which the feet, 
although placed flat on the earth, are not devoid of hair; but, on the 
