1869.] — ANATOMY OF PROTELES. 475 
the total want of teeth, and that, exclusively of our Swedish bears, 
the Hottentots themselves are likewise very fond of this food” *. 
Subsequently M. Delalande brought three specimens from South 
Africa to the Paris Museum. These, after receiving some prelimi- 
nary notices from both G. and F. Cuvier and Desmarest, formed the 
subject of a detailed descriptive and illustrated memoir by M, Isidore 
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire+, in which the animal is distinctly characterized, 
and named Proteles lalandii, the author having apparently been 
unacquainted with Sparrman’s previous notice ft. 
Although Isidore Geoffroy recognized the position of the animal 
as belonging to a genus distinct from, but allied to, Hyena, and 
although Cuvier had previously called it provisionally a ‘ Genette 
hyénoide”’§, De Blainville, in describing and figuring its skeleton in 
his great work on Osteology, places it among the Canide, treating it 
as if it only formed a subsection of the genus Canis, and endeavours 
to justify this position by its osteological characters. 
In my remarks on the value of the cranial characters in the clas- 
sification of the Carnivora, laid before the Society last January, I 
endeavoured to show that, as far as the cranial characters alone can 
indicate, its true position is intermediate between two groups, which 
I regard as nearly related, viz. the Hyenide and the Viverride, and 
that it is rather with the Herpestine section of the latter family that 
its relationship lies. 
Proteles has hitherto been known only by the skin, skeleton, and 
dentition, no anatomist having had an opportunity of examining any 
other portion of its organization. 
The arrival in the Society's Gardens early in the present year of 
three fine specimens, shipped from Port Elizabeth, and the subse- 
quent death of one of them (on June 13th), has enabled me to 
supply some of the information that has been until now so great a 
desideratum. 
EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. 
- The animal was a male and fully adult (see Plate XXXVII.). Its 
length, from the tip of the nose to the end of the hair on the tail, 
was 3! 4", from the tip of the nose to the root of the tail 2! 3", 
the length of the tail, without the hair, 10; the length of the head 
6-2; the greatest width of the head at the zygomata 3!'"6; from 
the shoulder-joint to the elbow 6", from the elbow to the wrist 63", 
from the wrist to the tip of the middle claw 53", from the hip-joint 
* A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope &c., from the Year 1772 to 1776, by 
Andrew Sparrman, M.D. ‘Translated from the Swedish original. London, 
1786. Vol. ii. p. 177. 
+ Mémoires du Muséum d’ Histoire Naturelle, tome xi. 1824, p. 354. 
+ M. St.-Hilaire gives the following explanation of the signification of the 
generic name which he gaye to this animal:—“ De zpo, devant, et de redyjers, 
parfait, complet. Je prends ici ce dernier mot comme équivalent de pentadac- 
tyle.’ ‘Le nom rappellera que les pieds antérieurs du nouvel animal sont 
complets, quant au nombre des doigts, par opposition avee ceux de la hyéne qui 
ne sont que tétradactyles” (doc. cit. p. 3595). 
§ Ossemens Fossiles, t. iv. p. 388 (1823). 
