350 Miscellaneous. 



is generically different from the American genus Lepidosiren, and 

 whether the generic name Protopterus proposed by Owen for the 

 Lepidosiren annectens should be restored or not. 



On the African Musk, Moschus aquaticus, Ogilby. 



Some time ago Mr. Ogilby, in the Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society for 1 840, described an animal in the collection of the Earl of 

 Derby under the name of Moschus aquaticus, which was very inter- 

 esting as being an African species of a genus which had hitherto 

 only been found in Asia and its islands. The general form and 

 colouring of the animal are so similar to that of the Mouse Deer, or 

 Traguli, from Java, Ceylon, and India, that it was natural it should 

 be placed with them in the same genus. But the Earl of Derby 

 having kindly sent a specimen with its skull to the British Museum, 

 the examination of the bones of the head have at once proved, that 

 instead of being a species of an Asiatic genus, it is the type of a pe- 

 culiar genus as yet only found in Africa, and therefore not, as has 

 hitherto been thought, an exception in the geographic distribution of 

 Mammalia. 



The skull is short with short broad nasal bones, which are dilated 

 and rather truncated behind ; the intermaxillaries are also short and 

 truncated behind, not extended behind the base of the upper ca- 

 nines. The ear-bones are large, vesicular, and produced beyond 

 the surface of the bones of the skull, while in the genus Moschus the 

 nasal bones are narrow, linear- elongate, and produced nearly to the 

 front edge of the orbit ; the intermaxillaries are large, dilated behind, 

 and produced behind between the maxillaries and the front of the 

 nasal bones, and the ear-bones are small and inclosed in the base of 

 the skull : from these characters and the pig-like habit of the animal, 

 I propose to form for it a genus under the name of Hyemoschus. The 

 skull is much more like that of the genus Tragulus than of Moschus, as 

 it agrees with it in the large size and vesicular form of the ear-bones; 

 but the Traguli are easily known from the Hyemoschi by the large size 

 and triangular form of the hinder part of their intermaxillaries, which 

 reach to the nasals and form the front part of the cheek in these 

 animals. 



1. MoscHDS. — Nasal bones linear- elongate ; ear-bones small, in- 

 closed ; intermaxillaries large, produced behind, narrow, and extended 

 far beyond the base of the upper canines. M. moschiferus, M. leuco- 

 g aster, M. chrysogaster. 



2. Tragulus. — Nasal bones elongate, rather dilated and truncated 

 behind ; ear-bones large, vesicular ; intermaxillaries large, triangular, 

 broad, oblique, truncated behind, hardly produced beyond the base 

 of the upper canines between the maxillaries and the nasal bones. 

 T.javanica, T. Stanleyanus {M. ecaudatus, Temm. MSS.). 



3. Hyemoschus. — Nasalbones short, dilated, and truncated behind. 

 Ear-bones large, vesicular; intermaxillaries small, short, scarcely 

 dilated behind on the front of the maxillaries, and not extended be- 

 yond the base of the upper canines. H. aquaticus. — J. E. Gray. 



