176 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Dec. 



which the bear is fond, as well as of standing buck-wheat, which is 

 perhaps preferred to other kinds of vegetable food. 



Yours very truly, 



L. L. STEWART. 



With reference to the above, Dr. Buckle mentioned having once 

 possessed a Cashmere bear which though tamed and well fed, killed and 

 ate a goat. He shewed an especial taste for old bones : and at last 

 his carnivorous propensities rendered it necessary to destroy him. 



The receipt of the following communication was annonnced. 



From Colonel A. Fytche " A Memorandum on the Panthays of 

 Yunan." 



At the request of the President, Colonel A. Fytche then read the 

 Memorandum as follows : — 



" Considerable difficulties exist in procuring correct intelligence of 

 the Panthays, or Mahomedan population of Yunan. In the first 

 place, they were not inclined themselves to be communicative ; but 

 rather assume a studied ignorance of their own affairs : — Secondly, com- 

 munication can only be ordinarily held with them, through Chinese 

 merchants and brokers, residents of Burma Proper, who speak the Bur- 

 mese language ; and who, in addition to their own private and self- 

 interested motives for preventing free intercourse with traders from 

 Yunan, are moreover in the pay, or subject to the influence of the 

 King of Burma. They well understand the royal policy of exclusive- 

 ness, and have been made acquainted with the several indirect orders 

 which from time to time, have been issued by the Government, in 

 order to restrict as effectually as possible, every means of intercourse 

 between Panthays and foreigners of all nations. The little information, 

 therefore, which it has been possible to collect from the above sources 

 furnished me by Captain Sladen, and also from a few Panthays who 

 visited Moulmain with a Shan caravan, when I was Commissioner of 

 the Tenasserim and Martaban Provinces in 1861, is vague and meagre; 

 but such as it is, I will now briefly record it. 



" A paper has been published in the Russian Military Journal for 

 August 1866, on the late rising of the Dungens, or Mussalman popula- 

 tion in Western China. I am of opinion that there is no political affinity 

 between the Dungens of the North Western, and the Panthays of the 

 South Western Provinces of China ; or rather, that the present 



