Game Animals of India, etc. 



reasons for believing that tlie species is found as far 

 west as the' Darjiling district ; and it reappears in the 

 form of a local race in Eastern Tibet. There is at 

 present no sufficient evidence that the insular repre- 

 sentatives of this bear can be distinguished either from 

 one another or from the mainland form, so that local 

 races cannot yet be established, although fuller materials 

 may render this possible. The nearest relative of the 

 species seems to be the spectacled bear {Ursus ornatus) 

 of the Chilian Andes. 



In 1905 the publisher of this volume received the 

 skull of a bear reputed to come from either Eastern 

 Tibet or the north-western provinces of China. It was 

 clearly that of a bruan, but since I had some doubt 

 whether it was really from the Tibetan area, I gave it 

 no further consideration. I subsequently learnt that 

 the skin of the same animal came with the skull ; and 

 that the entire specimen was mounted and sold to the 

 Bergen Museum as Ursus torquatus. The skin, I am 

 informed, has much longer black hair than the ordinary 

 Malay bear, with long fringes to the ears, and the usual 

 whitish gorget on the throat. 



In 1907 the same firm received another bear-skull 

 of similar type from the Tibetan area, which came with 

 a skin of Felis scrifta. As to its being Tibetan (in a 

 wide sense) there seems no question. It belonged to 

 a fully adult bear of the Ursus malayanus type, as is 

 evident from its width and relative shortness. Its 

 extreme basal length is 8.75, and its maximum width 

 8.5 inches ; these dimensions comparing with 8.5 and 

 8.3 inches in an old and large skull of the typical U. 

 malayanus measured by Dr. W. T, Blanford. So far as 

 I can see, there are no characters by which this skull 

 (in a limited series of specimens) can be distinguished 

 from that of the typical U. malayanus ; nevertheless, in 

 a paper published in the Zoological Society's Pro- 

 ceedings for 1907 I assigned the Tibetan bruan to a 

 distinct race, with the name of Ursus malayanus wardi. 



388 



