OCR Text |
Show 176 PROF. ST.-GEORGE MIVART ON THE ALUROIDEA. [Feb. 7, The genus is found in South Europe, all Africa, Asia Minor, Persia, and nearly the whole of the Oriental zoological region, and Foochow. The genus contains about twenty-one species, of which thirteen are Asiatic and seven African. The Asiatic species (thirteen in number) have been carefully worked out by Dr. J. Anderson1; for the rest (the African seven species) I may refer to Mr. Oldfield Thomas's paper, recently read before this Society2. All the species have five digits to each foot; but the pollex and hallux are very small. The claws are longer and less curved than are those of the genera as yet described (cf. fig. 14 G, p. 192). The body and tail are always long, and the legs short. The amount of hair to be found beneath the tarsus varies much. Generally both the tarsus and metatarsus are naked beneath ; but in some individuals of a species in which these parts are naturally naked, the tarsus may be more or less hairy, the hairy part having an ill-defined limit. Thus the specimen of Herpestes paludosus3 (No. 61. 6. 1. 3) has the tarsus hairy beneath, while in another specimen it is quite naked. The hair of the body is generally clothed with annulated fur, without any special markings on either shoulders, sides, or belly ; while a few have neck-markings, and one or two species have uniformly- coloured fur. In all the African forms the hair seems to be more or less annulated; but in three Asiatic species it is not so. The ears are short and rounded. There is no scent-gland between the penis and testes ; but the anus often opens into the middle of a sac-like depression, deepest on its hinder side, into which depression more or less numerous anal glands and glandular follicles open. The skull is elongated, with postorbital processes which are long and pointed, generally enclosing the orbit posteriorly, though sometimes not nearly joining the malar. As Prof, Flower has pointed out4, the auditory bulla is somewhat pear-shaped-the larger, rounded end being turned backwards and somewhat outwards, a well-marked transverse constriction separating the hinder (and here outer) chamber from the (also dilated and bullate) anterior (and inner) chamber. As Prof. Flower has also remarked, the aperture of communication in the osseous partition between the two chambers is rather larger than in the Civets, Genets, and Paradoxures. There is always an alisphenoid canal; but this is very short. The external auditory opening is very small and triangular, one angle being directed downwards. There is a foramen or a notch in the floor of the anterior (and inner) chamber of the bulla a little within the opening of the auditory meatus; and thus we have here an incipient defect of ossification in the floor of that passage; in Herpestes urva this defect is more marked, being rather a fissure than a foramen. The 1 'Zoology of Western Yunnan,' p. 168. 2 On Jan. 3, 1882. 3 Or H. galera. This is the Vansire of Buffon, Hist. Nat. vol. xiii. p. 157, pl. 21. 4 P. Z. S. 1869, p. 20 and fig. 9. |