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Show 360 DR. ST. G. MIVART ON THE ARCTOIDEA. [Apr. 21, The anatomy of the animal having been so fully described by Professor Flower, it is sufficient here to remark shortly that the tongue is pointed, covered with rather small conical papilla?, small fungiform papillae being generally scattered over the surface. The flattened papillae are inconspicuous, and the circumvallate papillae are in two rows of about four each, forming an acute angle open forwards. The liver has much the same general form as that of Nasua, but the right and left halves are pretty equal, and the caudate lobe is still larger. The lungs have four right and two left lobes. The heart is rounded, and the great vessels are given off as in the Genet. The thyoid cartilage is iEluroid and not Cynoid in shape. The os penis is much smaller than it is in Procyon and Nasua. The anal glands are a single pair as usual. The brainl shows but a feebly marked Ursine lozenge. The hippocampal and sagittal gyri join behind the crucial sulcus. Ailuropus 2.-This very singular genus, comprising only one very-rare species, is the giant of that Arctoid group of which the Raccoon is the type, being but a little smaller than the Brown Bear of the Pyrenees. From muzzle to tail-root it measures 1*50 m., and it stands '66 m. high. It feeds on bamboo-roots and other vegetal substances. It inhabits the most inaccessible mountaius of Eastern Thibet, from which it descends only to commit depredations in the plains. It is very bulky, with a short and exceedingly broad head, but the nose is small. The tail is so short as to be hardly visible. The feet are short and rounded, and, as in the Panda, the palmar and plantar surfaces are hairy, and the locomotion is not fully plantigrade. The fur is very thick, like that of a Bear. The skull is remarkable for its great sagittal crest, the shortness of the muzzle, and the enormous development of the zygomata, the extreme breadth between which is 89*3 compared with the length of the skull taken at a hundred. It is therefore greater than that of any other Carnivore, being most nearly approached by Ailurus, where it is 83-5, and Hyana brunnea, where it is 83'4, and the relative length of the second upper true molar also here attains its maximum. The breadth between the orbits behind the postorbital processes (which are almost obsolete in both the frontal and the malar) is less than in any of the terrestrial Carnivores, being only 14*8. That of 1 See I. c. p. 12, and also P. Z. S. 1870, pp. 755-757, figs. 1, 2, brain has been described and figured by Professor Flower. 2 Ursus melanoleucus, A. David, Nouvelles Archiv. du Mus. t. v. Bulletin, p. 13. Ailuropa melanoleucus, Alph. Milne-Edwards, Ann. des Sc. Nat. s6r. 5, 1870, t. xiii. art. no. 10. Ailuropus melanoleucus, A. Milne-Edwards, Nouvelles Archiv. du Mus. 1872, t. vii. Bulletin, p. 92, and ' Recherches pour servir a l'histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes' (1868-1874), tome i. (text) p. 321, tome ii. (atlas) plates 50-56. |
