146 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIII. 



There are no Brown Bears in the plains and it cannot have strayed there 

 from Kashmir. Nor was it like a Kashmir Bear. It was more like the 

 ordinary sloth bear of the plains, but brown instead of black. As far as I 

 can make out its coat is shorter, softer and more curly than that of a black 

 sloth bear and as it came towards me across a sandy nullah in the open it 

 looked different from an ordinary black bear in shape, being much broader 

 and having a more clearly defined outline. 



It was heavy but I did not weigh it. It taped just over six feet. Its 

 colour is a uniform brown, except its snout which is grey with a silvery 

 gloss about it and the horse shoe mark which is yellow. Its eye I would 

 call a very Irish eye. It is not brown but blue, a deep but very distinct 

 blue as to the iris, with a pupil very dark blue or black. I have never 

 seen or heard of such an animal, and I cannot find anything about it in 

 my book. My shikaris had never seen one before. A friend tells me that 

 the jungle men in the Orissa jungle tracts say there are two bears in their 

 jungles, one black and the other red. This is the only suggestion of a red 

 bear in the plains that I have ever heard of. Is there such a bear known ? 



I have compared the skull with two sloth bear skulls belorging to bears of 

 about the same size and there does not seem to be much difference in them 

 except that the one belonging to the Brown Bear is much broader. 



0. SAUNDEES. 



35, Chowringhi, Calcutta, 19^A April 1914. 



[As we have not had an opportunity of seeing either the skin or skull it is di- 

 fficult for us to offer an opinion but it may be a case of erythrism or partial albinism 

 in the common Indian Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus) of which R. A. Sterndale 

 reported several instances in Volume I, page 69 of the Society's Journal. — Eds.] 



No. v.— STRIPED WEASEL IN ARAKAN. 



The Society has recently received the skin of a striped weasel, Mustela 

 striyidorsus, Gray, from Mr. W. S. Thom. in Arakan. The occurrence of 

 this weasel in Arakan is of considerable interest as it links up the previous 

 known distribution, which was Sikkim and Tenasserim ! Originally described 

 in 1853 from two of Hodgsons specimens obtained in Sikkim, the only other 

 known specimen from outside that country was collected by Signore Fea 

 some thirty-five years later at Thagata in Tenasserim and recorded by 

 Mr. Oldfield Thomas in Annali del Museo Civico di Genova in 1892. 



N. B. KINNEAR. 



Bombay Natural History Society's Museum, 



April 1914. 



No. VI.— NOTES ON THE SMALLER KASHMIR FLYING 

 SQUIRREL. 



I send you herewith six skins and skulls of Sciwopterus fimbriatus, which 

 were obtained in June 1912 and June 1913 in Konani and Kothi Kanesar, 

 Chakrata Hills. All the specimens were shot in the evening as they left 

 the bungalow to go to feed. 



My attention was first drawn to them by being wakened up about 4-30 

 a.m., by the noise made by these squirrels running about on the wooden 

 ceiling and by a plaintive call of " Qn Uh " rather like that made by 

 a monkey. 



