t / 



i) On the Tibetan Badger. [Aug. 



Such being the marks of the only other known species of Taxidia, 

 I here can be no doubt our species is new ; and I fancy that Zoologists 

 will hail with surprise and pleasure the discovery of an emphatically 

 occidental type in the remote east. Very beautiful illustrations of our 

 animal, from the pencil of my Newar artist, accompany this paper ; and, 

 as the Trimpha belongs to a group of animals dubiously suspended, as 

 it were, between the Digiti grades and Planti grades, occasioning infinite 

 debate, I add to the other illustrations of my paper a comparative series 

 of views of the feet of such of these forms as belong to Himalayan 

 Zoology, and are mostly recent discoveries. These are Ursitaxus, 

 Helictis, Urva, Herpestes and Paradoxurus and Ailurus ; to which I 

 add of course Taxidia,* and Helarctos and Viverricula, as illustrative 

 extremes, merely of the other and medial forms. 



Dimensions of the Tibetan Badger. 

 (Female.) 



Total length from snout to end of tail tuft, 3 1 



Snout to vent, 2 3 



Head to occiput, straight, 5 ^ 



Snout to foreangle of eye, 2 \ 



Thence to base af ear, 2 | 



Tail and hair, 10 



Tail only, 7 



Girth behind shoulder, 1 6 



Palma and nails, longest, 3 ^ 



Planta and nails, from os calcis, 4 



Planta only, or nude rest of foot, 2 \ 



Longest forenail, 1 \ 



Length of hair on body, 4 \ 



Length of wool, 2 



Length of ear, less tuft, 1 \ 



Length of ear and tuft, 2 



* I have not met with Mydaus or Arctonyx or Arctictis in these regions, and I fancy 

 that Duvancel's authority for the last in Bhutan Vel Deva Dharma, is erroneously quoted 

 like mine. The alleged identity of Ursitaxus and Mellivora is yet open to doubt : nor 

 is it by any means certain that the species tenanting the plains of Hindosthan, the Biju is 

 the same as the highland animal or Bharsia. Some of the above details of Taxidia will, I 

 fear, prove tedious reading. But the type is rare and he who has it not before him can 

 judge its characters, especially those of the scull, solely by means of such minute description, 



