1885.] GENUS PARADOXURUS. "81 



Before proceediiia; to the synonymy of the species, a few words 

 on tlie history of the genus may be useful. 



That no notice of so extremely common and widely distributed 

 an Oriental type as Paradoxurus should be found amongst the earlier 

 zoological writers of the l/th and 18th centuries would be very 

 remarkable. It is probable that some of the descriptions given by 

 Sonnerat and others^ were founded upon species of this genus. 

 The first account, however, that has hitherto been recognized as 



evident from the fact that in Gray's ' List of the Specimens of Mammalia in the 

 Collection of tlie British Museum,' published in 184.3, the quotation runs pi. 6.'>. 

 f. 4-(>, and these are tlie figures called F. hondar by Temniinck. Gray evi- 

 dently accuses Temrainck in 1843, again in 1864, and once more in LS(j9, of 

 having figured the skull of P. grayi by mistake for that of P. hondar. Now 

 the two skulls differ much in form, and I can only say that Gray is entirely in 

 error, and that Temminck appears to me quite right. It is true that on the 

 same plate 65 of Temminck's monograph figures 1-3 represent the skull of 

 P. larvatus, which is extremely similar to that of P. grayi ; but tliese figures 

 1-3 were quoted by Gray in all the works mentioned under Paguma larvatu, 

 witli the addition in P. Z. S. 1864, p. 540, of t. 55. f. 1-3, which, although copied 

 without alteration in the subsequent B.M. Catalogue of 1869, is, of course, an 

 absurd uiistake, as plate 55 in Temminck's monograph contains figures of bats. 

 The description in Temminck's work at p. 332 is also that of P. hondar 

 (=P. niger). and not of P. grayi. The mistake on Gray's part is tlie more 

 noteworthy, because in P. Z. S. 1864, p. 527 (and in tlie B.M. Catalogue of 

 1869), he states that some of Temminck's figures of skulls are wrongly deter- 

 mined, and this figure of P. hondar is, so far as I can see, the onlj- ease quoted. 



Tlie second instance is the quotation, also under Paguma grayi, of " Amhly- 

 odon dare, Jourdan, Ann. Sci. Nat. viii. 276 (1837).'' On the next page Gi'ay 

 writes thus: — " The only character that M. Jourdan gives for Amhlyodon is the 

 following," and a quotation in French of some length follow.'? from the ' Annales 

 des Sciences Katurelles.' It is probable that Gray's knowledge of French did 

 not enable him to thoroughly understand the passage, or he must have 

 suspected a mistake, the fact being that the paper in the 'Annales des Sc. 

 Nat.' is not by M. Jourdan at all, but is a review of M. Jourdan's paper by 

 De Blainville, and extracted from the ' Comptes Rendus.' Had Gray turned 

 to Jourdan's original description in the 'Comptes Rendus,' v. p. 442, he would 

 have found a dcFcription at least as good as any of his own, and would pro- 

 bably not have referred the species to P. grayi. Judging from the description, 

 De Blainville was perfectly right in identifying it, in liis ' Osteographie,' 

 with P. Icucoviystax. 



My reason for quoting these two mistakes is that in each cise a charge is 

 brought against another naturalist upon evidence furnished by Dr. Gray's own 

 blunders. To correct Dr. Gray's mistakes in detail would be a Herculean 

 labour, but unfortunately they are constantly leading otiiers astray. Tlius, 

 in P. Z. S. 1868, p. 525, the genus Crocufa is said to be distinguished by 

 having " the hinder legs short." In the 1869 Catalogue, p. 212, Hyana. is 

 further characterized as having " legs subequal." Evidently the charactei's 

 have been transposed, for the hind legs are much .shorter in Hyaiia than in 

 Crocuta; but in a recent article on the Tu'emfte and their allies, wherein Gray's 

 separation of the genera Crocuta and Hywnais noticed, one of the distinguish- 

 ing characters of tlie former genus is said to be that the hind limbs are shorter 

 than the fore limbs. 



^ Schreber and Gmelin, under Viverra zeyloncnitis ( V. zeylaiiica), refer to 

 Marian }jhi I ipijcn sis, Camelli, Phil. Trans, xxv. p. 2204, and Gray also refers 

 to this species under Parado.rnrus ceylanicng. Camelli merely mentioned a 

 species of Marten, of which he gave an imperfect description, amongst the 

 Mammalia inhabiting the Pliilippine Islands. The so-called Marten may, how- 

 ever, have been a Parado.rnrus. 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 1885, No. LI. 51 



