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Show 378 DR. ST. G. MIVART ON THE ARCTOIDEA. [Apr. 21, The tongue has rather small but very marked pyriform papillae scattered all over its surface. The flattened papillae are considerably elongated and rather conspicuous. The circumvallate papillae form a V with three fine papillae in either limb and one at the apex. The brainl is very different from that of Galictis, in that its hippocampal gyrus is cut off from the sagittal gyrus by the junction of the calloso-marginal and crucial sulci. There is a more or less well-defined Ursine lozenge. Mustela2.-The Martens, or Stouter Weasels with normally four premolars on each side, both above and below, present us with the first Arctoid genus, but not species, common to the Old and New Worlds. Of the nine or ten species which appear to compose it, some are common to Europe and Asia, but none to the Palaearctic and Nearctic, or to the Palaearctic and Oriental regions, though the M. favigula extends from Northern Hindostan to Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. No species is Neotropical. The American Pekan 3, M. pennanti, is the giant of the genus, which may be 30 inches from snout to tail-root, with the tail 16 inches long. The body is long, the limbs short and digitigrade, the pectoral limb being about 54, and the pelvic limb 69, to the spine taken at 100. The ears are low, broad, and hairy on both sides. There is a distinct pouch, a moderate tragus and antitragus, a small helix, a very prominent supratragus overhanging a fossa bounded beneath by a rather marked transverse ridge and surmounted by another fossa, bounded above by a rounded transverse ridge. The nose has a median vertical groove. The soles and palms are generally hairy. In some forms, as in the Sable, they are extremely furry, but sometimes in southern species the palms and soles are naked *. There are 14 dorsal, 6 lumbar, 3 sacral, and from 18-23 caudal vertebrae. The metatarsals are at their maximum of relative length amongst Arctoids, while the length of the skull may be at its minimum (14*5 to 100) as also the length and breadth of the palate, width of the zygomata, the brain-case, the breadth behind the orbits, the length of the first upper true molar and of the second lower true molar, all compared with the length of the spine from the atlas to the end of the sacrum. Here the neural spine of the eleventh dorsal vertebra inclines forwards. The scapula has a large metacromion process. 1 See I. c. pp. 16 & 17, figs. 6 & 7. 2 Mustela, Linnaeus, Wagner, P. Gervais, and others; Martes, Gesner, Ray, Bell, Gray, Fitzinger, &c. For synonymy see Coues,' Fur-bearing Animals,' pp. 59, 62, 74, 77, 79, 81, 97, &c. 3 Pekan, Buffon, H. Nat. xiii. p. 304, pi. 42; Audubon & Bachman, Q. N. A. i. 307, pi. 41 ; the European and American Sables (M. zibellina and M. americana) belong to this genus ; the Weasels, Ermines, Stoats, Ferrets, Polecats, Minks, and Vison, to Putorius. 1 I am indebted to Mr. Oldfield Thomas for calling m y attention to this |
