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Show 1882.] MR. O. THOMAS ON THE AFRICAN MUNGOOSES. 59 3. On the African Mungooses. Bv OLDFIELD THOMAS, F.Z.S., British Museum. [Received December 2, 1881.] (Plate III.) In the Zoology of the Yunnan Expedition1, Dr. John Anderson of the Calcutta Museum has recently fully worked out the Oriental species of that difficult Viverrine group, the Mungooses ; and the present paper is an attempt to treat similarly those that are found in Africa. The latter, however, are very much less uniform in structure than the former, as they belong to no less than seven genera, six being peculiar to Africa, while the Oriental forms, as Dr. Anderson has shown, ought all to be included in the restricted genus Herpestes. The Oriental and African Mungooses together form a very natural subfamily, the Herpestina?2, quite distinct from the other large group of the Viverridae, namely the Civets and Paradoxures, or Viverrince. Prof. Flower, in his well-known paper on the classification of the Carnivora3, says of the Viverridae (p. 35) that f'they show a great tendency to break into two groups, of which Viverra, Paradoxurus, Arctictis, &c. belong to one, and Herpestes and its various modifications to the other, Rhyzcena being an aberrant member of the last," and (p. 20) gives a description of the characters of the base of the skull in this group, compared with those of the Viverrinae. Externally the members of this subfamily are distinguished by their comparatively lithe and slender form, and by their generally blunt, elongated, and but slightly curved claws, as compared with the short, sharp, semiretractile, and strongly curved claws of most of the Viverrinae. The following are the only two previous papers of any importance on the subject of the African species of this group :-(1) Temminck, Esq. Zool. Cote Guinee, pp. 93-118 (1853) ; and (2) Gray, P.Z.S. 1864, pp. 547-579. The first of these contains much useful information, especially with regard to the variation to which these animals are subject; nevertheless, notwithstanding his clear insight into the badness of other people's species, Temminck formed several bad species of his own in it. The second, by Dr. Gray, is a complete revision of the group, in which, however, such a large number of untenable genera are formed, and so many bad species are made and allowed, that the confusion into which the group had fallen cannot be said to have been removed by it. On the other hand, it must be admitted that i Op. cit. p. 168 (1878). 2 O n the principle of strict priority this name ought to be Suricatina, Suricata antedating Herpestes by seven years ; but it would be so obviously unsuitable to call the subfamily after one of its most aberrant members, that I think wo are iustified in using the later and more classical term. ' » P. Z. S. 1869, p. 4. |