PUTORIUS VULGARIS. 113 
The fossil remains of a small Carnivore of the Weasel- 
family (Mustelide), of the same size as the common Pole- 
cat, were first noticed by Cuvier, in his Memoir ‘‘ On the 
Bones of Carnivora, associated with those of Bears in 
Hungary and Germany,” published im the ‘ Annales du 
Muséum,” for 1807,* and subsequently reproduced in the 
successive editions of his great work on extinct animals. 
The remains in question were a few bones of the trunk 
and extremities: one of the vertebrae, the antepenultimate 
dorsal, differed from that in the common Pole-cat, and 
resembled that in the Cape species, called Zorille, in its 
greater breadth compared with its length ; an approximation 
which Cuvier recognised with much interest, seemg that 
the bones of the Cave Hyzna resembled most closely those 
of the existing spotted Hyena of the Cape.f The other 
remains, however, of the little fossil Carnivore bore a closer 
resemblance to the bones of the common Pole-cat, which 
induced Cuvier to leave its affinities doubtful, and to for- 
bear adducing the Cave Polecat in support of a once 
favourite idea, that it was in Southern Africa that we 
should look for the existing quadrupeds most nearly allied 
to those extinct species recognised by bones found in the 
Caves of Kurope. 
The entire skull (fig. 38), discovered in association with 
larger extinct quadrupeds in the bone-cave recently explored 
at Berry Head, Devon, by the Rey. Mr. Lyte, affords decisive 
SSTomsixe Pp. 40 
+ “La vertébre dorsale est moins longue et plus grosse que dans le putots: elle 
ressemble a celle du zorille, et ce rapprochement me frappa d’abord singulierement, 
vu que les os d’hyéne de ces cayernes ressemblent aussi beaucoup a ceux d’ 
hyene tachetée, qui vient du Cap comme le zorille.”—Ossem. Foss. ed. cit. p. 467. 
M. de Blainyille affirms, upon a re-examination of the fossils described by 
Cuyier, that the dorsal vertebra is the last of that series in the Martin-cat (Mowine) 
and belongs to a distinct animal from the pelyic bone and caudal vertebrae, both 
which he refers, with Cuvier, to the Pole-cat.—Ostéographie de Mustela, p. 57. 
