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Show 1890.] DR. ST. GEORGE MIVART ON THE GENUS CYON. 89 The numerous other skins in the Museum present a wide range of variation, some having the hair short and harsh, and others having long and more or less woolly hair. There is a light-coloured woolly skin from Nepal (45.1.8.311); and one specimen, brought by Lieutenant Abbott from Cashmere, which nearly approaches in lightness of colour and length of hair the specimen of C. alpinus from the Altai. Its skull1, however, which is labelled 158^, has but a small second upper molar, and the colour of the skin is redder and the fur less soft than that of C. alpinus, even the specimen from the Altai, which is the less white of the two. I would therefore, provisionally at least, retain C. alpinus as a distinct species. I have carefully examined the skin from Moulmein (61. 11.14. 2), which, from its dark back, certainly has an exceptional appearance, and has been regarded as an example of a distinct species, C. rutilans. I cannot, however, detect anything exceptional in its skull. Considering also the gradations of difference in colour and characters of fur between such specimens as that from Malacca (39. 12. 20.3), the true type2 of C. dukhunensis of Sykes, and others with yet longer or darker coats, I have found no external characters which I think can be regarded as specifically distinctive. The teeth of the red forms also vary more or less in size and proportion, without such differences coinciding with differences in the coloration, texture, and length of the coat. The two skins from which skulls3 have been extracted closely resemble each other, while the proportions of their first upper molars differ considerably ; a circumstance which tends to throw doubt on the distinctness of the North-Asiatic species, a doubt, however, which will disappear if future specimens of the latter animal are found to have large upper first molars. W e may therefore, I think, distinguish the species of this genus provisionally as follows :- Genus CYON, Hodgson (1838). 1. C Y O N JAVANICUS 4. Colour normally red; hair generally rather or very short and not woolly. M2 small. 1 This is Prof. Huxley's No. VI. I. c. 2 Dr. Murie, in his paper on this species (P. Z. S. 1872, p. 715), observes that the skull "from the Deccan forwarded by Colonel Sykes .... is juvenile, and therefore not to be relied on osteologically as distinctive of a type." This same skull is referred to by Dr. Gray (Catalogue of Carnivora, &c. 1869, p. 186) as that of Cuon dukhunensis. I find, however, that it is not a Cyon at all, but a true Canis. 3 These are respectively, Nos. 45.3.19. 5 and 46.5. 13. 2. 4 This species has been commonly named sumatrensis, after Hardwicke, whose paper in vol. xiii. of the Liunean Society's ' Transactions' dates from 1822. I do not doubt, however, that it is the same species which was described by F. Cuvier as "Le Loup de Java," in the Diet, des Sc. Nat. torn. viii. (1817), upon which Desmarest founded his species Canis javanicus, published in his ' Mammalogie,' p. 193-a name which thus dates from 1820, and which therefore, if I have correctly determined this synonymy, must take precedence. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1890, No. VII. , 7 |