24 
3. NoTES ON THE DISSECTION OF THE Parapoxurvus TyPus, 
AND OF Diepus Aeyrtius. By H. N. Turner, Jun. 
Having received, through the liberality of the Society, a few of 
the animals that have died in the menagerie in the course of the pre- 
sent winter, I feel bound to lay before them, as well as I may be able, 
whatever details of structure I observe which may be new, or may 
give rise to ideas calculated to assist in the advancement of the science. 
Since the Society have done me the honour to imsert in their Pro- 
ceedings the somewhat lengthened communication which I was last 
permitted to lay before them, I hope that the remarks I have now to 
offer, some of which have a bearing on the same subject, may also 
prove acceptable. 
It formed part of my object in that paper to demonstrate that the 
Viverrine group, (of which the Paradoxuri are now universally ad- 
mitted to form a part,) are so closely allied to the Cats as to safely 
warrant their being united with them in one family, instead of being 
looked upon as a section intermediate to the canine and feline groups, 
or, on account of their number of tuberculous molars, more closely 
allied to the former, in which light they have very frequently been 
considered: and [ think it will be apparent, from the observations I 
have now to bring forward, that the genus Paradozxurus, one of the 
least exclusively carnivorous of the order, and formerly associated 
with the Bears in the plantigrade division, has a much closer relation- 
ship with the group, which, from its being pre-eminently carnivorous, 
is usually considered as “typical” of the order, than naturalists have 
been wont to anticipate. It is not unfrequently the case, that when 
an affinity between two species or genera is established upon essen- 
tial peculiarities of structure, certain minor details, or even habits and 
actions of the animal, remind one so forcibly of the relationship we 
have already proved to exist, that they assume an unlooked-for de- 
gree of interest ; and, having kept for some time a living specimen 
of the common Paradoxurus, I think a few of the observations I have 
made upon it may on this account be interesting, in connection with 
the structural peculiarities which the receipt of a dead one has enabled 
me to remark. 
The claws are as retractile as in the domestic Cat, although from 
the absence of the long and soft hair, with which the sides of the toes 
are clothed in the latter animal, they are fully exposed when in the 
retracted position. But on examining the claws of the Paradoxure, 
it becomes obvious that the raising of the point from the ground is 
not the only means employed by Nature to maintain their sharpness. 
Every one must have observed in the common Cat, as well as in the 
larger species preserved in our menageries, the habit of occasionally 
scratching or dragging with the claws against the surface of any hard 
substance, a process not apparently calculated to improve their sharp- 
ness, but obviously intended to aid the shelling off of the outer layer 
of the claw, which is continually renewed by growth from the root, 
and the blunted point is thus occasionally replaced by a new one. I 
have not observed this habit in the living Paradoxurus ; but on ex- 
amining the claws of the dead one, I noticed that some of them were 
