Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon

Genus Ailuropus

This very rare and most curious animal should properly come between the bears and Ailurus, as it seems to form a link between the two. Such also is the idea of a naturalist friend of mine, who, in writing to me about it, expressed it as being a link between Helarctos Malayanus and Ailurus fulgens. Very little is, however, known of the creature, which inhabits the most inaccessible portions of a little-known country—the province of Moupin in Eastern Thibet. It was procured there by the Abbé David, who, after a prolonged residence in China, lived for nearly a year in Moupin, and he sent specimens of the skull, skin, &c., to M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, from whose elaborate description in his ‘Recherches sur les Mammifères’ I have extracted the following notice. The original article is too long to translate in extenso, but I have taken the chief points.