57 



April 12, 1831. 



N. A. Vigors, Esq., in the Chair. 



Mr. Coleman, adverting to the statement made at the last meet- 

 ing of the Committee that the female Armadillo had destroyed her 

 young, remarked that the cause of this apparent aberration of in- 

 stinct in a mother was generally to be found in the deficiency of 

 her supply of milk. In the many cases which had fallen under his 

 notice, in which female pigs, rabbits, and other domesticated ani- 

 mals had destroyed their progeny, he had always observed that the 

 secretion of milk in the mammary glands of the dam was greatly, if 

 not entirely, deficient. 



A letter was read from M. F. Cuvier, acknowledging the receipt 

 of the Society's circular, and embracing the offer contained in it of 

 establishing a scientific correspondence. M. F. Cuvier states that 

 the zoological subjects which possess at the present moment the 

 greatest interest in Paris are those which have been transmitted 

 from Chili, by M. D'Orbigny, who is now engaged in travelling on 

 account of the Jardin des Plantes. M. F. Cuvier has not yet ex- 

 amined them with care ; but he has observed among them a large 

 Rodent animal, which is probably the Patagonian Cavy of Pennant, 

 a species unknown to later zoologists : it forms the type of a new 

 genus allied to Ancema and Kerodon, its teeth having nearly the 

 form of those of the last-mentioned group, and being without distinct 

 roots. He has also remarked a very small species of Ratel, distin- 

 guished from the type of the genus, as it exists in the old continent, 

 by having two false molar teeth less in each jaw : it is also much 

 smaller, its size not exceeding that of the Pole- cat, (Mustela puto- 

 riusy L.) It is remarkable, he adds, that in Chili, the southern 

 extremity of America, a second species should at length be found 

 of a genus hitherto met with only in Africa and in India. " If 

 Buffon had been acquainted with this fact, he would have had a 

 fine example to adduce in favour of his hypothesis of the diminu- 

 tive size of the animals of the New World, as compared with those 

 of the Old." The Jardin des Plantes has recently obtained living 

 individuals of the small Deer of America, named by M. F. Cuvier 

 Cervus campestris ; this will shortly be figured in his ' Histoire Na- 

 turelle des Mammiferes.' Two other Deer have been presented to 

 the collection by M. Dussumier, by whom they were brought from 

 Timor : these appear to belong to two new species. From Mada- 

 gascar, M. Goudot has brought a small carnivorous animal, which 

 he states to be the true Vansire. The cranium of a very young 

 specimen agrees closely with that of a very young individual of the 

 Gulo orientalist Horsf. ; and as these crania in their general struc- 

 ture and their system of dentition differ from those of the genus 



