HEUDE'S CHINESE MAMMALS. 



9 



material in the Sikawei Museum. Through the courtesy of the 

 Jesuit Missionaries in charge I was able to do this, and the 

 following is an attempt to arrive at some definite conclusion as 

 to the validity or otherwise of Heude's numerous species, and to 

 determine therefrom the number of distinct species contained in 

 the genera Sus, Cervus, Capricomis, and Nemorhcedus in China, 

 Corea, Manchuria, and the adjacent portions of Thibet. 



Without intending to cast any slur upon the present curator 

 of the Museum, I must state that I found the specimens in some 

 confusion, due to the fact that Heude died in the midst of his 

 labours, leaving no one to fill his place or carry on his work. 

 The specimens were not numbered ; some of them even lacked 

 labels, so that it was with great difficulty that I found many 

 of the specimens of the species described and figured in the 

 publication already referred to in the beginning of this paper. 



Owing to the inevitable ravages of time and insects in such a 

 climate as that of Shanghai, I found the condition of the skins 

 very poor, and so was forced to confine my observations almost 

 entirely to the skulls of the specimens, but where possible I w T ent 

 over the skins as well and drew conclusions from them. In 

 regard to the pelts I found that Heude had evidently regarded 

 seasonal differences in colouring as specific, just as with the skulls 

 it was obvious that he had made specific differences out of those 

 due to age and sex. How so able a naturalist came to make 

 these errors it is difficult to understand ; and I want to make 

 it clear that in spite of his peculiar views on the classification 

 of species, Heude must be considered as one of the fathers of 

 Chinese mammalogy just as Pere David was the father of Chinese 

 ornithology. 



As regards the names of the species upon the labels attached 

 to the specimens, it was no uncommon thing to find that the 

 original name had been erased and substituted by another, which, 

 in some cases, was again erased and replaced by a third and 

 fourth. Sometimes one name would appear on the label, while 

 another would be written on the skull itself, and only in a very 

 few cases was the word type to be found. 



However, after going over the specimens carefully, I am 

 satisfied that I found most of the skulls figured by Heude. 



Another point to be noticed is that many of the specimens are 

 labelled from certain localities, while, in the descriptions of the 

 species, other, and in some cases somewhat misleading, localities 

 are assigned. Thus, of the sikas from the Poyang Lake District, 

 seven species are labelled by the original collector " Kiente" 

 In Heucle's descriptions of these species, he gives the localities 

 variously as "hills of Kiente," "territory included between the 

 north-east of the Poyang Lake and the Blue River," " Central 

 China," " Poyang Lake," etc. As a particular instance, take 

 the specimen marked Siha lachryrnosus. In the collection it is 

 labelled Kiente by the collector, yet Heude's description of it 

 gives its locality as Central China, which, to say the least of it, is 

 misleading. 



