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characters decisive against the musteline, and in favour of the canine 
group. And subsequently Mr. Waterhouse kindly pointed out to me, 
in that department of the Museum which is entrusted to his care, a 
fossil cranium from Brazil, which, from being found associated with 
jaws evidently belonging to that species, is most probably referable 
to the same, and in this I found that all the characters of the base 
of the cranium were precisely those of the Dogs. 
Although I have not had sufficient opportunities to enable me to 
offer anything original on the other parts of the anatomy of the 
Carnivora as bearing upon their classification, perhaps I may be al- 
lowed to mention a few known circumstances, which, as they co-exist 
(so far as is yet known) with the characters which I have pointed 
out in the three families Urside, Felide, and Canide, may serve to 
indicate that the importance I have assigned to those characters is 
not altogether undeserved. The presence or absence, and the struc- 
ture of the caecum have frequently been made use of in determining 
the limits of groups; and I need but to remind my readers, that in 
the Weasels, as well as in the Bears and the subursine animals, the 
cecum is wanting, and there is little or no distinction between small 
and large intestine ; also that it is in the Cats, in the Hyena, and the 
Viverrine section, that this separation is well-marked, and a small 
or but moderate-sized cecum is appended. In the Dog, the large 
intestine is but very little larger than the small intestine, but the 
separation is marked by a constriction, and by the addition of a 
cecum remarkable for the curious manner in which it is several 
times folded upon itself. There are two other portions of the organi- 
zation to which I will also allude, as affording characters serving to 
distinguish the three leading families; and in so doing I take the 
facts as I find them in the ‘ Lecons d’Anatomie Comparée,’ stated 
simply, and evidently without any intention of assigning to them 
any zoological importance. First, with regard to the accessory 
glands connected with the generative organs of the male: the 
vesicule seminales are wanting throughout the order, unless it be 
in the Coati-mondi, which Cuvier mentions among the animals pos- 
sessing them: this solitary exception, if so it be, seems to require 
confirmation ; unfortunately the only two Coati-mondis it ever fell to 
my lot to examine were both young females. The prostate is spoken 
of as forming in the Bear, and in the Otter, the Weasel and other 
« yvermiformes,” only a layer more or less thick around the com- 
mencement of the urethra, while in the Ichneumon, the Cats, the 
Dogs, the Hyena, and the Civets, it is salient, differing however in 
size and the number of its lobes; and Cowper’s glands are wanting 
in the Bear, the Racoon, the Otter, and other ‘‘ vermiformes,” and 
also inthe Dogs, but exist in the Ichneumon, the Civet, the Hyzna, 
and in the Cats. 
The larynx is an organ whose differences of structure are very 
likely to afford useful zoological characters when studied with that 
view. Cuvier, after describing the structure it presents in the Dogs, 
where the most striking characters seem to be the considerable 
development of the cuneiform cartilages, their S-like shape, and 
