Zoological Society. 349 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



June 22, 1847.— Harpur Gamble, Esq., M.D., in the Chair. 

 On the Porcupines of the Older or Eastern Continent, with 



DESCRIPTIONS OF SOME NEW SPECIES. By J. E. GRAY, ESQ., 



F.R.S., F.Z.S. etc. 

 This genus, on account of the similarity of the appearance of the 

 species, has been very imperfectly examined. M. F. Cuvier, in the 

 eleventh volume of the ' Memoires du Museum,' has given a paper 

 on the crania and teeth of the family, and divided them into genera, 

 forming those of the old world, which alone came within the scope 

 of this communication, into two : the first he calls Hystrix, and 

 figures as the type a skull which he considers as that of the Porcu- 

 pine of Italy ; and formed a second genus under the name of Acan- 

 thion for a skull brought by Leschenault from Java, and a skeleton 

 described by Daubenton (Buffon, H. N. xii. t. 53) in the Paris Mu- 

 seum. He gives a general description and some observations on the 

 relative size of the face and brain-cavity, rather than a character for 

 these genera, and no distinctive character by which the two species 

 of the genus Acanthion can be recognized. 



The Baron Cuvier does not take any notice of the genus Acanthion 

 in the second edition of the • Regne Animal' (i. 215), but merely 

 observes that the Indian and African species have their heads less 

 swolien ; but he formed for the fasciculated Porcupine (H. fasciculata) 

 a genus under the name of Atherura, characterized by the muzzle 

 not being swollen, and the tail elongated and not prehensile. Some 

 authors, as Fischer (Synopsis Mam. i. 267, ii. 602), have considered 

 this animal as the one on which F. Cuvier established his genus 

 Acanthion. See on this subject the excellent remarks of Mr. Bennett 

 on the gardens and menageries of the Zoological Society, i. 176. 



J. F. Brandt, in the ■ Memoires de l'Academie Imperiale des Sci- 

 ences de Saint Petersbourg' for 1835, on the Rodent in the mu- 

 seum of that Academy, has also overlooked M. F. Cuvier's genus, 

 and he observes, " The genus Acanthion of F. Cuvier I add to the 

 genus Hystrix, on account of the resemblance of the cranium of 

 H. hernitorostris with that of Acanthion Daubentonii. G. Cuvier, 

 although he proposed the new genus Atherura, does not say a word 

 respecting A canthion in the new edition of the ■ Regne Animal' ; and 

 I should almost conclude from his words under the genus Hystrix 

 (i. 215), — ■ there are (in the genus Hystrix) species with the head 

 less swollen ;' that he himself regarded the quotation Acanthion and 

 Hystrix as one and the same." — Me'm. Acad. Pe'tersb. 1835, 267, note. 



I may here remark, that the skull figured by M. F. Cuvier as that 

 of the Italian Porcupine does not agree with our specimen of the skull 

 of the European species, and belongs to what I have considered the 

 genus Acanthion, as I keep the name of Hystrix for the old Linnsean 

 species H. cristata : that the skull figured by Brandt as a new species, 

 under the name of Hystrix hernitorostris, does agree with our speci- 

 men from Xanthus, which I regard as the European species ; and 



