. xiii. part i. p. 67.

NO. 303. PTEROMYS ALBIVENTER.
_The White-bellied Flying Squirrel_
(_Pteromys inornatus of Jerdon, No. 161_).

NATIVE NAME.--_Rusigugar_, i.e., flying rat, Kashmiri.

HABITAT.--From Nepal, along the North-western Himalayas to Kashmir.

DESCRIPTION.--Upper parts grizzled reddish-brown or dark grey with
a rufous tinge, or a reddish-bay, darker on the upper surface of the
parachute, and outside of limbs; head, neck, and breast
greyish-rufous; cheeks grey; chin, throat and lower part of breast
white, faintly tinged with rufous in the belly; under part of
parachute rufous, tinged white, with a greyish posterior margin.
Occasionally a dark brown band over the nose and round the eyes; the
whiskers and feet blackish.

SIZE.--Head and body, 14 inches; tail, 16 inches.

This is a common squirrel at Simla. One was killed close to the house
in which I was staying in 1880 at the Chota Simla end of the station
by a native servant, who threw a stick at it, and knocked it off a
bough, and I heard of two living ones being hawked about for sale
about the same time--which, to my regret, I failed to secure, some
one having bought them. They are common also in Kashmir, where they
live in holes made in the bark of dead fir-trees. They are said to
hybernate during the season there. A melanoid variety of this species
is mentioned by Dr. Anderson as being in the Leyden Museum. It was
obtained by Dr. Jerdon in Kashmir, and presented to the Museum by
the late Marquis of Tweeddale.

NO. 304. PTEROMYS CANICEPS.
_The Grey-headed Flying Squirrel_
(_Sciuropterus caniceps of Jerdon, No. 163_).

NATIVE NAME.--_Biyom-chimbo_, Lepcha.

HABITAT.--Sikim and Nepal.

DESCRIPTION.--At first sight this seems to be a grey-headed form of
the last species, but with larger ears; the head is iron grey; round
the eyes and a patch above and below orange fulvous or chestnut; the
base of the ears the same. Regarding this Dr. Anderson, on comparing
it with the last, writes: "On a more critical examination of _P.
caniceps_ it appears to me, judging from Hodgson's types of the
species, that it has larger ears, and if this should prove to be a
persistent character, then the grey head and the chestnut speck above
and below the eye, and the bright chestnut tuft behind the ears,
assume a specific importance which they would not otherwise have."
But he adds that his observations are merely from preserved specimens,
and that the question