390 CLASSIFICATION OF CARNIVORA CHAP. 
subdivisions. The caecum is never large, and may be, as in the 
Bear tribe, completely absent. 
The distribution of the Carnivora is world-wide, excluding only 
the Australian region, if, as seems probable, the Dingo of that 
region is an introduced species. The most striking features in 
their distribution are perhaps the following :—There are no Bears 
in the Ethiopian region or in Madagascar, and but a single species 
in the Neotropical. The only Carnivora in Madagascar are the 
Viverridae, and of the seven genera there found six are peculiar. 
The Procyonidae are nearly entirely New World in range; out of 
sixteen genera of Mustelidae only five are New World, and only 
two of those are pecular to the American continent. The 
Hyaenidae are limited to the Old World. 
The classification of the Carnivora is a matter which is 
difficult, and which has therefore been very variously effected. 
It is unfortunate that the classification of Flower (based upon 
the researches of H. N. Turner as well as his own, and accepted 
by Mivart) should fail when applied to fossil forms. For it 
separates with great clearness the existing genera into three 
great divisions, the Cynoidea, Aeluroidea, and Arctoidea, definable 
by visceral as well as by osteological characters. The apparent 
anomaly, too, of a single supposed Viverrine genus, to wit 
Bassariscus, existing in America, while all the rest of its kin 
are Old-World forms, was shown by his characters to be 
neither an anomaly nor a fact. It will be better, therefore, 
to divide the Carnivora into the families, Felidae, Machae- 
rodontidae, Viverridae, Hyaenidae, Canidae, Ursidae, Procyonidae, 
and Mustelidae, indicating at the same time the reasons 
for and against retaining the three divisions of Sir W. 
Flower. 
Fam. 1. Felidae.'—This family includes only the Cats (7.2. Lions, 
Tigers, “ Cats,” Hunting Leopard, ete.), and is to be distinguished 
by the following characters :—In the skull the auditory bulla is 
much inflated, and there is an internal septum; the paroccipital 
processes are flattened against the bullae. There is no ali- 
sphenoidal canal. The dental formula is 13, C1, Pm3 to 2, 
M1. The carnassial tooth of the upper jaw has three lobes to 
the blade; that of the lower jaw is without an inner cusp. 
1 See St. G. Mivart ‘‘On the Aeluroidea,”’ Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, p. 135: and 
The Cat, London, J. Murray, 1881. 
