FOSSA FOSSA. 245 



in the Paris Museum. Mousieur de Pousargues was kind 

 enough to inform me that an anterior half of a skull, 

 containing the jaws, of what he thought to be that of 

 the type, really was in the Laboratoire d' Anatomie comparée. 

 Through the great kindness of my friend and colleague 

 Prof. Milne Edwards of the Paris Museum, 1 have now 

 before me that highly valuable anterior half of the supposed 

 type-skull of Fossane Buffon. As I remarked above the 

 cast is a very fine one, so perfectly made that each tooth 

 and molar can be studied. And now it was a very great 

 surprise , that in comparing teeth of the skull with those 

 of the cast, I found that in the left ramus of the lower 

 jaw of the skull there are tioo instead of three incisors : 

 the same abnormity is to he found in the cast ; this strik- 

 ing conformity is too obvious as to give rise to the sup- 

 position that it might be merely an accidental resemblance. 

 It proves that the old specimen in the Leyden Museum 

 really is the type-specimen of Buffon s Fossane, 



Scrutinizing in our archives I could not find any list 

 of exchange with the Muséum du Jardin des Plantes, con- 

 taining the name Fossane, however Temminck and Schlegel 

 paid in 1835 a visit to the Paris Museum and by that 

 occasion made a lot of exchanges : so that we can now 

 understand how we did procure the valuable specimen in 

 question. 



It is evident, that a specimen having been preserved 

 about 140 years, hardly can be in what may be called a 

 fine condition; it agrees however very well with de BufFon's 

 description, although it is lighter colored generally, more 

 brownish red. 



The posterior part of the skull has been cut off as was 

 the practise in foregoing days and the hindmost lower molars 

 are wanting (fallen out) ; in the left ramus of the lower 

 jaws is the anomality that 1 described above. For the rest 

 the jaws are, compared with a skull of another specimen 

 in our collection, much smaller, and this corresponds 

 exactly with what the skin shows, as the whole animal 



Notes frora the Leyden TMuseum, "Vol. XX. 



