464 THE CARNIVORES 



China, and also occurring in the Philippines, Celebes, and Formosa. They may be 

 either uniformly colored or striped, and, with one exception, have no rings on the 

 tail, which is very long, but not prehensile. In size most of them may be com- 

 pared to a large cat with relatively short legs. Their ears are small and rounded, 

 the pupil of the eye is vertical, and the claws are completely retractile. The most 

 distinctive external feature is to be found, however, in the soles of the feet, which, 

 in both the fore and hind-limbs are almost completely naked ; the bald area 

 being continued backward from the foot-pads without the intervention of any hairy 



space. 



The palm-civets are purely nocturnal and thoroughly arboreal in their habits ; 

 their food in accordance with the structure of their teeth consisting in part of 

 animal and in part of vegetable substances. The name Paradoxurus often angli- 

 cized into Paradoxure was given to these animals on account of a caged specimen 

 in Paris having its tail coiled up in a peculiar manner. It was believed that this 

 was the normal condition, and that the tail could be used as a prehensile organ. It 

 appears, however, that although the palm-civets have naturally some power of coil- 

 ing and uncoiling their tails, yet that the permanently coiled condition, as shown in 

 the Paris and some other caged specimens, is a kind of disease due to the effects of 

 captivity. Altogether there appear to be upward of eleven well-distinguished 

 species of true palm-civets, five of which are found in India and Burma. In nine of 

 these species the tail is considerably more than half the length of the head and 

 body ; and in eight of these it is uniformly colored. The Celebes palm-civet (P. 

 musschenbroeki) , forming the ninth in this series, is, however, distinguished by 

 having its tail banded with indistinct rings of darker and lighter brown. The im- 

 perfectly-known woolly palm-civet {P. laniger) , was described upon the evidence of 

 a single skin, said to have been obtained from Tibet, and differs from all the rest in 

 the woolly nature of its fur, and also by the length of the tail not exceeding that of 

 the head and body. It is not certain that it really belongs to the same genus as the 

 other species. The eleventh species is known only by a skull remarkable for the 

 large size of its teeth. 



The best known of all the species is the common Indian palm-civet (P. niger)* 

 found throughout the greater part of India and Ceylon, and figured on p. 457. In 

 this species the tail is nearly or quite as long as the head and body ; and the general 

 color of the coarse and somewhat ragged fur a blackish or brownish gray, without 

 any stripes across the back in fully adult individuals. The length of the head and 

 body of a male measured by Mr. Blanford was twenty-two and one-half inches, and 

 that of the tail nineteen and one-half inches ; the corresponding dimensions of a 

 female being in one instance twenty and seventeen and one-half inches, while in a 

 second both were about eighteen inches. 



Writing of this species, the late Dr. Jerdon observes that ' ' it lives much on 

 trees, especially on the palmyra and cocoa palms, and is often found to have taken 

 up its residence in the thick thatched roofs of native houses. I found a large colony 

 of them established in the rafters of my own house at Tellicherry. It is also occa- 

 sionally found in dry drains, outhouses, and other places of shelter. It is quite 



* Also known as P. musanga. 



