90 W. P. Masson — Four Mammals of Darjeeling. [No. 2, 



It is entirely a very glossy black, with the exception of a very narrow 

 white mark on the chest, sending up a branch on each side in front 

 of the shoulder ; the nose is buff-coloured or white. I have shot many of 

 both species, and have now in my possession skins of both. Most of 

 the villagers about the hills could have told Mr. Sterndale that there 

 were two kinds of bears, one called ' bhooe bhaloo,' or ground bear, 

 and another ' rook bhaloo,' or tree bear. I have always found the bhooe 

 bhaloo or ground bear (Ursus tibetanus) very much more numerous 

 than the rook bhaloo or tree bear." In the same note I mentioned that 

 on the 23rd of October, 1883, a friend, my brother and myself went 

 to Birch Hill Park about 9 p.m. one moonlight night, and we saw three 

 bears in a small oak eating the acorns ; an 1 on the following night 

 counted no less than five in a single tree, all of them were rook 

 bhaloos. These numbers are unusual, as a rule not more than a couple 

 of bears are seen in one tree. I may remark that I have since found 

 that U. tibetanus in the Darjeeling District does climb trees, as I have 

 shot them in oaks when the acorns are ripe in October. Also that the 

 smaller species, Z7. malayanus, principally affects oaks and chestnuts, 

 in which they form rude nests by breaking off the smaller branches and 

 piling them into a heap amongst the larger branches ; and that the 

 examples of TJ. malayanus I have shot were of the normal form des- 

 cribed by Mr. Blanford in which the crescentic white patch on the 

 chest does not have the apex prolonged into a white streak on the 

 abdomen. The claws are short. The hillmen dread the rook bhaloo 

 very much more than the larger species, and they all agree that if 

 disturbed it attacks at once. 



Atherura macrura, Linnaeus. I have had the Asiatic Brush-tailed 

 Porcupine from below Gang, from near the Rum am river, and from 

 the Rohtak Valley — all in Sikhim. One of my collectors brought me 

 a fine specimen of the species from be3 T ond Sundukpho on the Nepalese 

 frontier, over 11,000 feet elevation. 



NemorhdsJus bubalina, Hodgson. I have shot (he Himalayan 

 Goat-antelope or Serow on some rocky steep hills close to Sundukpho 

 at about ] 1,000 feet elevation, have seen them shot at Senchal at about 

 8,000 feet, have again got them on some rocky steep ground below 

 Soom and Singtom at about 4,000 feet, and again on some very rocky 

 grouud on the Sikhim side of the Rumam river at about the same 

 elevation. 



Gemas goral, Hard wicke. I have shot the Goral near Phi lot and 

 near Tongloo, at about 12,000 feet elevation, again on the landslip 

 between Soom and Singtom, and numbers are to be found on some 

 xevy rocky and precipitous ground on the banks of the Rumam River. 



