214 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
Lest the aims of the founder and of the present proprietors of the 
Sikawei Museum should continue to be misunderstood, as it would 
seem they have been in the past, the present opportunity may be 
taken to state that this institution is intended to be a working museum, 
where good and useful scientific research may be carried out in the 
various branches of natural history that come within its sphere of 
influence. It is not merely a show place, as are so many of the muse- 
ums founded and maintained by missionary societies in China. This 
accounts for the fact that the proprietors are reported to have refused 
all offers of purchase tendered by European or American museums. 
Heude passed away in the midst of his labor and his work has never 
been completed, though Pere Court ois, his successor and present 
curator of the museum, has attempted in the fifth volume of the Mem- 
oires, published after Heude ’s death, to clear up the vexed question of 
the status of the Chinese, Japanese, and Manchurian bears. The 
conclusions he arrives at do not agree entirely with my own, notably 
in regard to Heude’s Ursus leuconyx and Lydekker’s t/. arctos yessoensis, 
both of which in my opinion he places in the wrong groups or genera. 
Doubtless had Heude hved to complete his work — if such work can 
ever be considered complete — he would have modified his views to a 
large extent, and reduced the number of names of species that he created. 
It is to be hoped that the present attempt to clear up the subject of 
the names of the bears of eastern Asia, and of China in particular, will 
meet with the approval of the proprietors of the Sikawei Museum, 
without whose permission to go over and study the material it con- 
tains, nothing short of extended and costly explorations in the field 
could have enabled mammalogists of Europe and America to under- 
stand the species under discussion. 
In the family Ursidce comparatively little has been done in China, 
and but little is known of the bears that occur there. Although ancient 
Chinese writings and pictures give evidence that bears once occurred 
in various places, while the natives preserve semi-mythical accounts 
of what they call Kou-hsung, J^n-hsilng, and Ma-hsiing, or dog-bears, 
man-bears, and horse-bears, occurring in many of the wilder parts of 
the country, it is probable that these animals have not been known in 
the greater part of Chihli, Shansi, North Shensi, Shantung, and north- 
ern and eastern Kansu for a considerable period of time, probably for 
centuries. 
The writer has received persistent and fairly reliable reports of the 
occurrence of bears in the Tung Ling (Eastern Tombs) area to the 
