LIFE OF FLOWER 123 



studied the Australian marsupials in a memoir recently 

 published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of 

 London. 



If it be correct, it reduces the net result of Flower's 

 investigations on this subject to a fuller realisation of 

 the diprotodont affinities of the animal under considera- 

 tion. 



In the latter part of 1 868, Mr. Flower, as he was 

 then styled, communicated to the Zoological Society a 

 most important paper entitled, " On the Value of the 

 Characters of the Base of the Cranium in the Classification 

 of the Order Carnivora," which was published in the 

 first part of the Society's Proceedings for the following 

 year. Working on the lines suggested twenty years 

 previously by Mr. H. N. Turner, who had pointed out 

 the importance of certain peculiarities of the base of the 

 skull in the Mammalia, and especially demonstrated their 

 constancy in the different groups of the Carnivora, 

 Flower felt himself justified in dividing, on these char- 

 acters, the existing terrestrial representatives of that 

 order into three groups. These were 1st, the 

 ^Eluroidea, comprising the cats (Felidts), the fossa 

 (Cryptoproctidts), civets and mongooses (Viverrid<e) y the 

 aard-wolf (Proteleidte), and hyaenas (Hyanidd) ; 2nd, the 

 Cynoidea, including only the dogs, wolves, and foxes ; 

 and grd, the Arctoidea, embracing the bears (UrwV<r), 

 the raccoons and pandas (Procyonida and lurid<z), and 

 the weasels, badgers, otters, etc. (Mustelida). 



One result of this classification from cranial character- 

 istics was to determine definitely the position of the 

 American cacomistle (Bassaris or Bassariscus), which 

 had been previously uncertain. The genus, as might 



