Sport and Science on the Sino-Mongolian Frontier

The biological work done on the journey made by Mr. Anderson and myself through Shensi, along the Ordos border and back into Shansi, resulted in some very interesting discoveries. No fewer than eight new species and five new subspecies were described by Mr. Oldfield Thomas of the British Museum from our collection of mammals. The descriptions of these, together with the names of and notes on the other twenty species represented, were published in the _Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London_, 1908, pages 963 to 983. A detailed list would therefore be superfluous here, though the following general remarks may be of interest to the reader.

As Mr. Thomas pointed out, the most striking feature of the mammalia of the districts adjoining the Ordos is a general paling of colour, as compared with the nearly related species of the non-desert regions further south and east. This is especially noticeable in the Ordos chipmunk (_Eutamias asiaticus ordinalis_), the hare (_Lepus swinhoei subluteus_), and the North Shensi sulphur-bellied rat (_Epimys confucianus luticolor_), and is undoubtedly due to the general pale buff colour of their sandy or loess surroundings.