Note 3 — Tale II.

Marmot. The sandy plains of Tibet are frequently inhabited by marmots, who live together in holes, and whose fur is at the present day an important article of the Tibetian trade both with India and China. It is now generally allowed that it must be these beasts which were intended in the marvellous accounts of the old Greek writers of the gold-digging ants. Though the Indians themselves gave them the name of ants, pipîlika (e. g. Mahâ Bhârata, i. p. 375, v. 1860), the description of them would pass exactly for that of this little animal—in size somewhat smaller than a fox, covered with fur, in habits social, living in holes underground in the winter.