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JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
he was in Tientsin with his regiment. The other two skulls were of a 
fully adult male and a fully adult female of the Manchurian black 
bear, secured by me in the forests of North Kirin, I-mien-p’o district 
(near Ninguta); while the photograph was of the skull of a large 
grizzly-like bear shot by me in the same district. 
After a careful examination of the skulls I had at my disposal, and a 
comparison of these with the figures in Heude's Memoires and Courtois’ 
note, and with due reference to other literature on the subject, I come 
to the conclusion that the bears of the regions under discussion are 
divisible into several generic groups, but three of which directly con- 
cern us here. These are: 
1. Selenarctos Heude (= Arcticonus Pocock). 
Type. Ursus thibetanus Cuv. 
2. Ursus Linnaeus (= Ursarctos Heude). 
Type. Ursus arctos Linnaeus. 
3. Spelceus Brookes (= Danis Gray, and Pocock; 
Spelcearctos E. Geoffroy; and Melanarctos Heude). 
Type. Ursus spelceus Rosenmiiller. 
In thus dividing the bears of these regions that were formerly all 
placed in the one genus Ursus into three genera, I am conforming to 
the tendencies of modern systematists, and am bringing these groups 
into line with Thalarctos, the polar bear; Euarctos, the North American 
black bear; Tremarctos, the South American spectacled bear; Melursus, 
the Indian sloth-bear; and Helarcios, the Malayan sun bear. 
As a matter of fact Mr., R. I. Pocock,^ has preceded me in this form 
of classification, but his Arcticonus is, unfortunately, synon 5 mious with 
Heude^s much earlier Selenarctos for the bears of the Ursus thibetanus 
group; while his revival of Gray’s Danis for the group to which the 
grizzlies belong cannot stand, since that name was first used by Fab- 
ricius for a genus of insects in 1808, and so was preoccupied. Gray 
having applied it to the grizzlies in 1825. 
I. Selenarctos Heude, 1901 
Memoires concernant VHistoire Naturelle de V Empire Chinois, vol. V, p. 2, 1901. 
Type: — Ursus thibetanus Cuvier. 
The bears in this genus belong to the Himalayan black bear, Ursus 
thibetanus Cuv., group, and are characterized by having a pure black 
1 See R. I. Pocock’s valuable papers on this subject in the P. Z. S., 1914, pp. 
889-941; Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, vol. XX, pp. 128-130, 1917; and ibid., 
ser. 9, vol. I, pp. 375-384, 1918. 
