1840,] 



Mammalogy of the Hmalatjas, 



161 



respects perfectly similar to those of the back. The fur on the bodj-^ is 

 about an inch m length, and nearly as long on the head, which gives the 

 face a rough shaggy appearance. The nose is entirely covered with 

 short harsh hair of a uniform brown colour ; the upper lip is bilobed as 

 in the Hare ; the ears are of an elliptical form wdth regularly rounded 

 tops, covered internally with very short brown hair, and on the outside 

 with long white hair at the base, and short brown at the top, the poste- 

 rior edges having a scarcely perceptible narrow white border. They are 

 about half an inch broad and three quarters of an inch in length, with 

 a small internal lobe about a quarter of an inch long, and have the fold- 

 ing inwards of the anterior margin, and, consequentl}', the resulting fun- 

 nel shape of their basal portions, which Pallas noticed in the species of 

 Northern Asia. Dr. Richardson could observe nothing of this appear- 

 ance in his L. princeps^ but I presume this must have arisen from the im- 

 perfect state of his specimens in a part so liable to be injured, since an 

 individual in the British Museum exhibits the structure too obviously to 

 have otherwise escaped the notice of that accurate Zoologist. The 

 vibrissse of L. Roijlii are nearly as long as the head and ears together, and 

 of a uniform urow^n colour. The arms and fore-arms, and, I presume, the 

 thighs and legs, for, as I have already observed, the posterior members 

 are wanting in the specimen, are covered with fur of the same colour and 

 quality as that on the body, only shorter ; but the whole upper face of 

 the carpus, and probably also of the tarsus, is covered with short adpres- 

 sed hair of a bright reddish yellow colour. The soles of the fore feet 

 present four naked tubercles, corresponding to the extremities of the toes, 

 and a fifth, considerably farther back, which represents the heel, and is 

 separated from the others by a space covered with very short brown hair. 

 The thumb is situated behind the other toes, and, like them, has a small 

 sharp claw of a dusky horn colour. 



Dr. Royle obtained his specimen on the Choor Mountain. I take it 

 to be this animal which Captain Mundy* met with during his interesting 

 tour recently published, and which he describes as something between a 

 hare and a guinea-pig ; and it is probably, also, the tailless rat which 

 Turnerf observed in Thibet, where the banks of a lake were everywhere 

 perforated by its burrows.]; 



* Tour in India, II., 196. 

 + Journey to Thibet, 211. 



t I have since seen perfect specimens of this animal, but have nothing to adi to the 

 d«*scription here given. 



