April 14, 1894. J 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



311 



THE STRANGE ANIMALS OF THIBET. 



Thibet has long been a land of mystery, it is only quite 

 recently that any reliable information on its physical 



\ features and natural productions has reached the outer 

 world, and to this day it continues to be the least known 



I section of the globe in all senses. It is such an immense 

 region, so isolated by natural and artificial barriers, and 



I so peculiar in its conditions that it would indeed have 



I been a wonder had its zoological productions not proved 

 y new and strange in a degree unknown since the discovery 



of America and Australia. 



It was in fact a virgin field for the zoologist when in 

 1869 the Catholic missionary, Abbe Armand David, went 



II to live in one of the valleys of the district known as the 

 Moupin, and there collected in a few months the speci- 



II mens that were forwarded to Professor Alphonse Milne- 

 | Edwards, of Paris, and formed the material for the studies 

 | that he afterward published in his "Researches on the 

 I Mammals of Eastern Thibet." 



Attention is directed anew to the fauna of this region 

 H by the paper on the collections made recently by Prince 

 D Henri of Orleans, read by Prof. A. Milne-Edwards at the 

 I International Zoological Congress, at Moscow, in 1892, 



I and recently published. While the results of l'Abbe 



II Armand David's explorations are known to zoologists, to 

 I many readers they will be wholly new. 



Prof. Milne-Edwards proceeds to examine in detail 

 \ the various mammals that the indefatigable missionary 

 I, discovered in less than a year. In all there are forty of 

 | these; some thirty odd are new to science and the rest are 

 r extremely rare; many are types of new genera, while not 

 a few represent new families, and this among large 

 I mammals. What a naturalist's paradise 1 Truly Thibet is 

 ( to the world just now what Mexico is to America. 



The attention of the general observer of this collection 

 would at once be arrested by the coon-bear, on account of 

 its great size and extraordinary appearance. 



This animal, Ailuropus melanoleucus (till now unknown 

 to science), looks much like a large black and white bear; 

 but according to Prof. Edwards it is struc- 

 turally not a true bear at all. In its denti- 

 tion it approaches rather to the hyenas and 

 the cats, while its feet remind one of the 

 panda or Asiatic raccoon (Ailurus), whence 

 the name that it has received — Ailuropus 

 or "Ailurus-footed." The cranium, again, 

 differs extremely from the types of Mus- 

 telidce as well as from that of the Hyaena, 

 and supports the claim of a new group for 

 the species. Its feet, as seen below, are not 

 truly plantigrade, as in bears and coons, 

 but resemble the semi-plantigrade feet of 

 the panda. The fur is like that of a bear, 

 and the curious coloration is the same in all 

 ages and sexes. 



"The Ailuropus inhabits the most inac- 

 cessible mountains of eastern Thibet, and 

 never descends from these retreats to ravage 

 the fields, as does the black bear, and the 

 chase of this animal presents very great 

 difficulties. It feeds principally on roots, 

 bamboos and other vegetables. 



"According to the information furnished . 

 to the Abbe David by the hunters of Moupin, 

 it attains to a very great size; but the adult 

 male, of which the museum possesses the skin, is not so 

 large as our Pyrenean brown bear. He measures from 

 the point of the nose to the base of the tail (following the 

 curves of the back) 1,50 meters [about 4ft. 9in.]. and his 

 height at the withers is .66 meters [about 25*in.]." 

 | Not less curious to the zoologist will be found the beau- 

 tiful little Nectogale elegans, a sort of large shrew with 

 the habits of an otter. 



"The Abbe A. David discovered this curious insectivore 

 on the margins of the fierce torrents which descend from 

 the mountains of Moupin. In these it swims and dives 

 with remarkable ease in spite of the rapidity of the cur- 

 rent, and gives active chase to the smaller fish. Although 

 ) it is not rare it is difficult to secure specimens on account 

 of the peculiar manner in which it lives; it is necessary to 



lopes, is thick-set and low on its feet. Its head is heavy 

 and its neck short; its chest iB broad, its body massive and 

 its limbs extremely robust; it seems to be organized for 

 climbing on steep declivitips and to rush upon its enemies 

 after the manner of the Cape buffalo and the musk-ox, 

 rather than to bound lightly and to save itself from danger 

 by flight. In short it is seen only on the high mountains, 

 and the hunters assert that it is very formidable. * * * 

 "According to the information which they gave to the 

 Abbe David this species lives on the steepest and most 

 densely wooded declivities of the highest mountains. It 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP OR BIGHORN. 



does not go far from these excepting during the night to 

 feed. In winter, when all the mountains are covered 

 with snow, it retires to the highest naked summits, 

 where at this season the snow never falls, and where it 

 finds abundance of long dry herbs on the steep banks ex- 

 posed to the sun, which has melted the snow which fell 

 in summer and autumn. 



"The budorcas seems to be quite common on all the 

 great mountains of eastern Thibet; it ranges as far as those 

 of western Se-tchouan. It lives generally alone or in 

 small bands. However, it seems that in the month of 

 June they are found in large herds. 



"Its strong and sharp horns inspire the hunters with 



POLO SHEEP. 



drain the little stream and pursue the animal into the 

 bottom of the holes in which it takes refuge. 



Another curiosity is the weeping muntjac or Cervulus 

 lacrimans, a tiny deer only I6in. in height at the withers. 

 It has remarkably long pedicels for its horns and almost 

 no horns at all, so that in a sense it may be said to shed 

 only the tips of its antlers. Its immense tusks are another 

 remarkable feature. 



• The budorcas (Budorcas taxicola tibetand) is character- 

 ized by Milne-Edwards as one of the most remarkable 

 animals of the Thibetan fauna. "It is one of those 

 animals with mixed characters, which seem to have bor- 

 rowed the peculiarities of their organization from several 

 very distinct types; it has affinities at the same time with 

 the antelope, the sheep and the bovine families. 



"The budorcas, far from being an animal of light and 

 elegant shape, formed for speed, as are most of the ante- 



dread, and they prefer to take the animal in traps rather 

 than to pursue it with firearms. 



"The cry of the budorcas is a low, very deep bellowing; 

 it snorts loudly when it is alarmed. Its dung is hard and 

 round, like that of sheep and goats, and not confluent 

 like that of cattle. 



"The total length of a young male, following the curves 

 from the end of the nose to the base of the tail was 2.13 

 meters [about 7ft.]; height at the withers 1.02 [about 

 40in.]." 



Other animals of great interest are one or two species 

 of flying squirrel, one of these Fteromys albo-rufus, a 

 giant measuring in total length some 40in., being in fact 

 the size of a small fox. Several species of true Mus, at 

 least three species of Lagomys, or tailless dwarf hare, 

 deer, marmots, martens, etc., corresponding in a measure 

 with our own, as well as monkeys, leopards and pheasants, 

 of which we have no representatives. Other animal 

 wonders of this vast landlocked continent, not encountered 

 by David, are the pale, or snow, tiger, the white, or 

 snow, leopard, the Thibetan bear, the yak, or grunting 

 ox, and the ailurus, or Asiatic raccoon, with its wonder- 

 ful rainbow fur, and several large species of mountain 

 sheep and goat, some of them somewhat like our bighorn; 

 but the monarch of them all, the king of the bighorns, 

 the great Polo sheep, is worthy of more than merely 

 categorical notice. 



This magnificent animal was discovered and described 

 by Marco Polo several centuries ago when he made his 

 famous journey into Asia. But nothing more was heard 

 of the creature, and in time men came to believe that the 

 great Polo had been indulging in a traveler's romance 

 and had founded his account of the fabulous horns on 

 the very poor foundation presented by the horns of a 

 Himalayan wild sheep. Recently, however, the further 

 exploration of western Thibet has led to the re-discovery 

 of the great sheep. From one of the specimens brought 

 by Messrs. de Breteuil and Ridgway from the Pamir I made 

 the herewith drawing, and from a specimen alongside in 

 the same case I made the sketch of the American big- 

 horn. They are drawn to the same scale and the reader 

 who knows the Rocky Mountain species can make com- 

 parisons for himself. 



In 1840, Mr. Blyth read before the Zoological Society of 

 London, a paper on the genus Ovis, in which he intro- 

 duced to the scientific world the great Polo sheep. He 

 makes the following remarks: 



"Ovis polii, nobis (the Pamir sheep). In the narrative 

 of the celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, we read 

 (in Maraden's edition, p. 142), that upon the elevated plain 

 of Pamir, eastward of Bokhara, and which is 16,000ft. 

 above the sea level, 'wild animals are met with in great 

 numbers, particularly shpep of a large size, having horns, 

 three, four and even six palms in length. The shepherds 

 form ladles and vessels of them for holding their victuals. 

 They also construct fences for inclosing their cattle, and 

 securing them against the wolves, with which they say 



the country is infested, and which likewise destroy many 

 of the wild sheep or goats. * * * 



Mr. Blyth had nothing but a pair of horns to found 

 his description on, but a second pair was found, and in 

 1860 a third pair found their way to London. It was not, 

 however, until 1874 that a complete skin was procured 

 and described by Dr. Stolicza in the Proc. Zoo. Soc, with 

 a colored plate of the animal. 



Travelers and sportsmen have added to our information 

 from time to time since then, and recently in a work on 

 the "Mammalia of India," by Sterndale, we have the 

 following facts: The weight of an adult Polo sheep is 

 from 576 to 6121bs., the head and horns weighing over 

 721bs. He also mentions a pair that was 48in. from tip 

 to tip, 14in. girth at the base and 73in. "round the curve." 

 The last measurement evidently means of one horn, which 

 would give 12ft. 2in. as the total length of the pair. 

 Another pair mentioned were nearly 5ft. from tip to tip, 

 and 16in. in girth at the base seems common, while Stol- 

 icza mentions a pair that were each 18£in. in girth. 



The concluding paragraph of the describer is as follows: 

 "Large flocks of Ovis polii were observed on the undulating 

 high plateau to the south of the Chadow-Kul, where 

 grass vegetation is abundant. At the time the officers of 

 the mission visited this ground, i. e., in the beginning of 

 January, it was the rutting season. The characters of 

 the ground upon the Pamir and upon the part of the 

 Thian Shan inhabited by these wild sheep are exactly 

 similar." 



From this it would seem that this is not an Alpine 

 species like the American bighorn, but rather an inhab- 

 itant of the plateaus and foothills outskirting the great 

 backbone of Asia on the north. 



The original describer having nothing but the horns, 

 supposed a much larger animal than it really is, but still 

 it is considerably larger than our bighorn, while the 

 great size of his majestic horns renders them a fitting 

 crown for him as king of all the bighorn race. 



Ernest E. Thompson. 



The paper above referred to, read by Prof. A. Milne- 

 Edwards before the International Zoological Congress at 

 Moscow, enumerates a great number of species contained 

 in the collection of Prince Henri of Orleans. On the 

 slopes of the Tien-Tsin Mountains of Chinese 

 Turkestan are found many large mammals 

 very different from those of Europe and also 

 different from those of Thibet. There are 

 wolves, bears, deer, roe deer, tigers and 

 panthers, while on the elevated and arid 

 desert at the foot of these mountains gazelles 

 are very abundant, as are also foxes, a cat 

 somewhat resembling one of the smaller cats 

 of northern Africa, and wild camels in small 

 herds. 



On the higher land between Turkestan and 

 Thibet are the great Polo sheep and the bur- 

 rell sheep, gazelle, wild yaks and wild ass*. 



Southwest from here in the mountain 

 country, covered with forests of coniferous 

 trees, monkeys are abundant, some of them 

 with long, thick fur, and living even up 

 among the snow. Here, too, are found 

 many species of cats, the panthers being the 

 largest. Wolves and wild dogs, foxes, 

 skunks and martens are all common, and 

 there are at least two bears, as well as one 

 species of raccoon-bear. Ailuropus, how- 

 ever, is not found in this region. Among 

 the rodents are many squirrels, a ground 

 hog, several mice and hares, as well as two species of 

 Lagomys, 



Ruminant mammals are also numerous here. Two of 

 them are wild yaks, another is a large antelope which 

 belongs to the same group with the American white goat, 

 two musk deer, a roe buck and a rusa deer. 



The collection is one of extreme interest, and the species 

 contained in it show more or less resemblance to many 

 Chinese forms, while also possessing certain peculiar char- 

 acters which are not found elsewhere. 



An American traveler, Mr, W. W. Rockhill, now resid- 

 ing in this country, has several times penetrated into the 

 very heart of Thibet, and indeed has traversed it from 

 end to end. As Mr. Rockhill is not only an explorer and 



WEEPING MUNTJAC. 



geographer, but a sportsman as well, it is to be hoped 

 that before long be will give his countrymen the benefit 

 of some of his experience with the big game of Thibet. 

 | lit is to be remembered in considering the great polo 

 sheep and comparing it with our bighorn , that it is by no 

 means certain that the latter is an "Alpine species." It 

 is true that at present it lives high up among the bare 

 rocks of the mountain tops, and we are disposed to re- 

 gard it as "Alpine" in the same sense that we call the 

 white goat or the white-tailed ptarmigan Alpine, but 

 there is very grave question whether this designation was 

 originally applicable to the mountain sheep. On the con- 

 trary we are inclined to believe that this habit of life is 

 one which has been recently acquired and which has re- 

 sulted from its persecution by hunters. Richardson men- 

 tions that a member of his party found them living on 

 the slopes at the foot of the mountains. We ourselves 



