272 THE MAMMALIA. 



approximates the living families. The French 

 investigator means to say that they are dog-like 

 animals, but not dogs ; that, in fact, they cannot 

 be classed with any one of the present families 

 of Carnivora, although showing the character- 

 istics of the class in the various parts of their 

 skull with which we are very well acquainted the 

 mid jawbone, gums, alar processes, tympanic bones 

 as well as the form of the skull as a whole. We 

 should not exactly say that the animals stand be- 

 yond our system of arrangement, but that they do 

 away with existing gaps. This is most obviously 

 the case with their dentition. In most of these 

 forms of Cynodictis which can be denned as 

 species the teeth are all well marked and developed 

 according to their position. But in Cynodictis inter- 

 medius, the last lower molar, m 3 , is so small that it 

 is evidently of not much use, and we may rely upon 

 its gradual disappearance. Were this to happen 

 we should then have the dental formula of the 

 Viverras. And it does happen: the race named 

 Cynodictis intermedius viverroides from the C. inter- 

 medius has become a Viverra. 



With the loss of that molar there arises a small 

 modification, p*, hence one connected with the im- 

 portant carnassial tooth of the lower jaw; and 



