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Show 1885.] GENUS PARADOXURUS. 781 Before proceeding to the synonymy of the species, a few words on the history of the genus may be useful. That no notice of so extremely common and widely distributed an Oriental type as Paradoxurus should be found amongst the earlier zoological writers of the 17th and 18th centuries would be very remarkable. It is probable that some of the descriptions given by Sonnerat and others1 were founded upon species of this genus. The first account, however, that has hitherto been recognized as evident from the fact that in Gray's ' List of the Specimens of Mammalia in the Collection of the British Museum,' published in 1843, the quotation runs pi. 65. f. 4-6, and these are the figures called P. bondar by Temminck. Gray evidently accuses Temminck in 1843, again in 1864, and once more in 1869, of having figured the skull of P. grayi by mistake for that of P. bondar. Now the two skulls differ much in form, and I can only say that Gray is entirely in error, and that Temminck appears to me quite right. It is true that on the same plate 65 of Temminck's monograph figures 1-3 represent the skull of P. larvatus, which is extremely similar to that of P. grayi; but these figures 1-3 were quoted by Gray in all the works mentioned under Paguma larvata, with the addition in P. Z. S. 1864, p. 540, of t. 55. f. 1-3, which, although copied without alteration in the subsequent B.M. Catalogue of 1869, is, of course, an absurd mistake, as plate 55 in Temminck's monograph contains figures of bats. The description in Temminck's work at p. 332 is also that of P. bondar { = P. niger), and not of P. grayi. The mistake on Gray's part is the more noteworthy, because in P. Z. S. 1864, p. 527 (and in the B.M. Catalogue of 1869), he states that some of Temminck's figures of skulls are wrongly determined, and this figure of P. bondar is, so far as I can see, the only case quoted. The second instance is the quotation, also under Paguma grayi, of " Ambly-odon dore, Jourdan, Ann. Sci. Nat. viii. 276 (1837)." On the next page Gray writes thus:-" The only character that M. Jourdan gives for Amblyodon is the following," and a quotation in French of some length follows from the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles.' It is probable that Gray's knowledge of French did not enable him to thoroughly understand the passage, or he must have suspected a mistake, the fact being that the paper in the 'Annales des Sc. Nat.' is not by M. Jourdan at all, but is a review of M. Jourdan's paper by De Blainville, and extracted from the ' Comptes Rendus.' Had Gray turned to Jourdan's original description in the 'Comptes Rendus,' v. p. 442, he would have found a description at least as good as any of his own, and would probably not have referred the species to P. grayi. Judging from the description, De Blainville was perfectly right in identifying it, in his ' Osteographie,' with P. lenco?nystax. M y reason for quoting these two mistakes is that in each case a charge is brought against another naturalist upon evidence furnished by Dr. Gray's own blunders. To correct Dr. Gray's mistakes in detail would be a Herculean labour, but unfortunately they are constantly leading others astray. Thus, in P. Z. S. 1868, p. 525, the genus Crocuta is said to be distinguished by having " the hinder legs short." In the 1869 Catalogue, p. 212, Hycena is further characterized as having " legs subequal." Evidently the characters have been transposed, for the hind legs are much shorter in Hycena than in Crocuta; but in a recent article on the J Overrides and their allies, wherein Gray's separation of the genera Crocuta and Hycena is noticed, one of the distinguishing characters of the former genus is said to be that the hind limbs are shorter than the fore limbs. 1 Schreber and Gmelin, under Viverra zeylonensis {V. zeylanica), refer to Martes philippensis, Camelli, Phil. Trans, xxv. p. 2204, and Gray also refers to this species under Paradoxurus zeylanicus. Camelli merely mentioned a species of Marten, of which he gave an imperfect description, amongst the Mammalia inhabiting the Philippine Islands. The so-called Marten may, however, have been a Paradoxurus. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1885, No. LI. 51 |
