JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. 



Vol. LXIX. Part II. — NATURAL SCIENCE, 

 No. II.— 1900. 



II. — Note on four Mammals from the neighbourhood of Darjeeling. — By 

 W. P. Masson. Communicated by the Natural History Secretary. 

 [Received 14th January; Read 4th April, 1900.] 



Mr. G. C. Dudgeon, F.E.S., having recently published in the 

 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, p. Ill (1899), a paper 

 entitled " Mammalia not hitherto recorded from the Darjeeling 

 District and Sikhim," I venture to lay my experience gained by having 

 collected largely during a period of nearly twenty years in that region 

 before the members of the Society, as regards the animals referred to 

 by Mr. Dudgeon. 



TJrsus malayanus, Raffles. With regard to this animal in the year 

 1883 I wrote to " The Field" under the nom-de-plume of " Pnlteney " 

 a note entitled "Bear Shooting in Darjeeling": — " Jerdon, in his 

 ' Mammalia of India' — and I see Mr. Steroidal e follows him — has only 

 one species of black bear found on the Himalayas (TJrsus tibetanus) * 

 Now I know two distinct kinds, 77. tibetanus and a smaller species. 

 77. tibetanus seldom climbs trees, but the smaller species always does. 



* Mr. W. T. Blanford in ' The Fauna of British India— Mammalia/ p. 197, 

 n. 93, uses the name U. torquatus, Wagner, for this species in preference to 

 17. thibetanus, Cuvier, the older name, for the reason that this bear is not found in 

 Tibet itself, and is therefore misleading. \_Ecl.~\ 



J. ii. 12 



