CARNIVORA. MUSTELID^. 47 



Specific characters. Fur glossy brown ; chin and throat dusky 

 white, grayish, or yellowish-brown ; neck and head long ; legs 

 short ; tail pointed, and shorter than the body. 



Description. Color dark, glossy brown, pale or whitish about 

 the throat and face ; body long and cylindrical ; neck nearly as 

 thick as the body ; feet with five toes on the anterior feet, and 

 four, with a rudiment of a fifth, on the posterior feet, short, 

 strong, and webbed ; tail depressed at base ; the skull is wide and 

 depressed posteriorly ; muzzle short and wide ; upper lip thick ; 

 eyes small, and placed near together, and far in advance ; ears 

 small, slightly rounded, and partly concealed in fur ; the two last 

 grinders of the upper jaw large, the three others small and crowd- 

 ed ; the last but one largest in the lower jaw ; at the base of the 

 tail there are two oval glandular bodies about the size of a butter- 

 nut, in which there is a yellowish substance about the thickness 

 of cream, when the animal is dead, which has rather a strong, 

 disagreeable odor, but not so much so as in the Mink ; kidney 

 lobulated ; skin tough ; females smaller than the males. 



Dimensions. 



Male. Female. 



ft. in. t'ths. ft. in. I'ltif. 



Whole length, .' 400 350 



Tail, 150120 



Height at the fore legs, 8 



Length of the head, 4 5 



Circumference at the middle of the hack, . 17 



Length of another female, 3 8 



Height at the shoulder, 9 



Tail, 14 



From the nose to the meatus, 4 



Skull. 



Length, 043 



Height, 015 



Greatest width of the zygomatic arches, . . . .025 



Length of another old skull, 4 



Width, 026 



Length from the incisors to the meatus, .... 030 



meatus to the other, 2 3 



u u 



