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Show 1882.] PROF. ST.-GEORGE MIVART O N THE ALUROIDEA. 519 SEXUAL ORGANS. The penis presents every variety as to its internal osseous support. It is entirely boneless in the Hyanida; and the bone is rudimentary or absent in the Viverrina. It is tolerably developed in the Herpestina, and very large indeed in Cryptoprocta. Cuvier says * of the Ichneumon : - " Le gland est comprime sur les cotes, arque en dessus a son extremite, et compose, en tres grande partie, de l'os qu'il contient. Son bord inferieur present une fente qui ne s'e'tend pas jusqu'a l'extremite. Elle aboutit a une sorte de cul-de-sac tres profond, qui remplit l'e'chancrure de l'os, et au fond duquel viennent s'ouvrir, par deux orifices separes, l'uretre et le canal excreteur commun des glandes de Cowper." Crocuta differs from all other iEluroids in that the clitoris is enormous and traversed by the urogenital canal2. In Arctictis the Cowper's glands are each less than half the size of the bilobed prostate. In Prionodon, on the contrary, each Cowper's gland is about as large as is the whole of the bilobed prostate. According to Professor Owen (Anat. of Vertebrates, vol. iii. p. 780), Felines have usually six nipples, four ventral and two pectoral ; but there are eight in the Domestic Cat. There are four ventral teats in Paradoxurus, Herpestes, and Hyana; but in Viverra there may be two pectoral teats also. SCENT-GLANDS. Of these glands there are two very distinct categories. One category comprises the prescrotal scent-gland3, and the other the anal glands. The Prescrotal Glands3. These are met with in their most complete form in Viverra civetta, where there is a pair of medianly adjoined glands placed between the penis and the scrotum in the male, and in an analogous position in the female. Their secretion escapes into a large scent-pouch, the external aperture of which appears as an antero-posteriorly extended slit simulating a large vaginal aperture. This aperture is larger than either the vulva or the anus. Each scent-gland is about twice the size of one of the animal's anal glands ; and in each scent-gland is a central cavity which communicates with the median scent-pouch, into which the glands also open by a number of minute orifices. In Vwerra sibethai the scrotum is similar. In Arctictis the secretion of the prescrotal gland exudes into a naked cutaneous invagination placed, like a vulva, in front of the anus. A similar invagination exists in Paradoxurus, and a naked space in Nandinia. In Genetta and Hemigalea the conditions are those already described and figured by me5. The scent-glands contain numerous 1 Lecons d'Anat. Comp. vol. viii. p. 222. 2 P. Z. S. 1877, p. 369, fig. 41. 3 Ohatin, Ann. des Sci. Nat. (5th series) vol. xix. (187-1). 4 There is an old but an excellent preparation of these glands in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Physiological Series, No. 2514. s P.Z.S. 1882, p. 156. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1882, No. XXXA^. 35 |