THE BIG GA.MK OF WKSTKRX CHINA. 245 



Bears are by no means rare in the western parts of the 

 Sin-ling range, and in the Pe-ling right away into Tibet. 

 They occur throughout the parallel ranges of Szechwan, 

 down into Yunnan, and shortly one may say throughout the 

 mountains of Western China and the Central Asian plateau, 

 becoming more plentiful in the most desolate regions. They 

 are of course not easily found, since they hibernate during 

 the winter and in summer keep to the most thickly forested 

 country, or to the bleakest plateau land: so that there was no 

 chance of our meeting with a bear 6n Tai-pei-san, though 

 the hunters told us they were found there, and we promised 

 them untold wealth to unearth one. The black bear referred 

 to by the natives is probably the Himalayan bear, or a 

 variety of it f i'rstts torquatus), since they spoke of white on 

 the breast and paws; but the common brown bear of Europe 

 and Asia is almost certainly to be found here (i'rsus arctos) 

 having a wide and probably continuous distribution over the 

 mountainous regions of Eurasia north of the Himalaya, from 

 the British Isles (where of course it is now extinct) to 

 Kamschatka. Bears do not seem to be sufficiently common 

 in China proper to cause extensive damage to crops, and 

 this no doubt accounts for the fact that the native hunters 

 do not eagerly seek out the animal to destroy it; I do not 

 remember to have seen a single skin for sale. In Kansu we 

 heard of two intrepid hunters who had gone after one for the 

 sake of its skin, and one of them had been rather badly 

 mauled only a couple of days before our arrival in the 

 district. One of the consuls in Chengtu had also shot one, 

 in the Sung-pan district; but generally speaking, though 

 widely distributed they are not often met with, and one needs 

 to go a long way west for them, though the black bear does 

 not occur at all in Tibet, and the one frequently referred to 

 by Tibetan travellers is presumably the brown bear. 



The Tai-pei massif consists of a long ridge trending 

 roughly north-east and south-west, across the main axis of 

 the Sin-ling range, terminating on either flank in tremendous 

 precipices: from the top, one could look straight down into 

 the defiles below, but there was no way of reaching them 

 from above except by way of one or two precipitous gullies 

 jammed full of angular granite blocks of scree material 

 fallen from above, for, so far as I was able to observe, the 

 mountain seemed to be composed of limestone capped with 

 granite, or some such coarse-grained igneous rock. Given 

 off from the main ridge was a number of spurs, their summits 

 hewn into strange aiguilles and pinnacles, and these dropped 

 abruptly away sheer into the gullies below in huge bare walls 

 of limestone. Firs and larches clung amongst the rocks of the 

 knife-like ridges, and covered the summits of the mountains 



