vol" XI.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 40t 



be considered as the reason that the food is a long while in passing, though the 

 way be but short. 



The fourth is the female lynx, which is one of the animals th^t have short 

 guts, of which kind the lion is also one, whose guts they found hardly longer 

 than three times the length of his body: which argues speedy digestion and 

 great voracity. 



. The fifth is the otter, the difference of which from the castor they have very 

 carefully observed ; as they have also the peculiar connection of the spleen of 

 the otter, which they say is different from that of almost all other animals, in 

 which that viscus is generally fastened to the stomach, whereas in this otter it 

 was fast to the epiploon. And as to a foramen ovale they have found no ap- 

 pearance in this otter, that it had ever had a hole that could give passage to the 

 blood from the vena cava into the arteria venosa; which, they say, agrees well 

 enough with that remark which all the ancients have made, viz. that the otter 

 is constrained from time to time to rise above the water to breathe, which a 

 castor does not, as having a far greater facility to be a long while without res* 

 piration. 



The sixth is the civet cat, which they were glad they had the opportunity to 

 compare with a castor, as those two animals agree in those organs that are very 

 peculiar to them, which are the receptacles wherein that liquor is collected that 

 is so remarkable for its scent, but is very sweet in the one, and very unpleasant 

 in the other. Which made them search whether there was not some particular 

 reason of this diversity of smell; but to them it appeared not that there was 

 any other cause than the diversity of the temperament of these animals, the 

 civet cat being hot and dry, drinking little, and living in hot and dry countries; 

 but the castor, living now in the water then upon the earth, and being a very 

 moist creature, has not heat enough to concoct and perfect its humidity. 



They had, it seems, two of these cats, a male and a female, which were so 

 like one another outwardly, that there was not so much as any distinction of 

 sex that appeared; the male, on the dissection, being found to have its genitals 

 hid and shut up within, and the vessel that contains the odoriferous liquor being 

 altogether alike in both. Which vessel is a pouch or sack under the anus, not 

 under the tail, as Aristotle puts it in his hyena, which they make the same with, 

 the civet cat, and is different from the matrix, both very accurately described 

 by them. As to the odoriferous liquor, they found it come forth in the male as 

 well as the female, out of a great number of glandules that are between the two 

 coats that compose the pouches, which were in the male very large, and very 

 small in the female ; the male yielding also a civet more pleasant than the female, 

 •though authors generally affirm the contrary. They found not that the smell 



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