Since only one species has been discovered, it has the name all to itself; and therefore would not require any specific appellation.

But for all that, one has been given to it.

On account of its shining coat, it has been called the _ailurus fulgens_.
Though the closet naturalists, in following out their pedantic propensities, have created a genus expressly for this animal, there is nothing either in its appearance or habits to separate it from the badgers, the racoons, the coatimondis, and such other predatory creatures.

Like them it preys upon birds and their eggs, as also on the smaller kinds of quadrupeds, and like the racoon, it is a nimble tree-climber.
The situation in which the particular panda, of which we are writing, first appeared to the eyes of Karl and Caspar, proved this capacity, and its actions the moment after testified to its fondness for birds'-eggs.
It had not been a minute under the eyes of the spectators, when they saw that it was after the eggs of the hornbill; perhaps, too, it might have had a design of tasting the flesh of their owner.
Resting its thick plantigrade hind feet upon the projection of the tree, it erected itself like a little bear; and with its fore-paws commenced scraping at the barrier wall which the male bird had spent so much time and taken so much pains in building.

It is possible that if it had been left to itself, it might in time have succeeded in forcing an entrance into the nest, and highly probable too--or it would scarcely have entered upon the task.