176 PROF. ST.-GEORGE MIVART ON THE ZLUROIDEA. [Feb. 7, 
The genus is found in South Europe, all Africa, Asia Minor, 
Persia, and nearly the whole of the Oriental zoological region, and 
Foochow. 
The genus contains about twenty-one species, of which thirteen 
are Asiatic and seven African. 
The Asiatic species (thirteen in number) have been carefully 
worked out by Dr. J. Anderson’; for the rest (the African seven 
species) I may refer to Mr. Oldfield Thomas’s paper, recently read 
before this Society”. 
All the species have five digits to each foot ; but the pollex and hal- 
lux are very small. The claws are longer and less curved than are 
those of the genera as yet described (cf. fig. 14 G, p. 192). The 
body and tail are always long, and the legs short. The amount of 
hair to be found beneath the tarsus varies much. Generally both 
the tarsus and metatarsus are naked beneath; but in some indi- 
viduals of a species in which these parts are naturally naked, the 
tarsus may be more or less hairy, the hairy part having an ill-defined 
limit. Thus the specimen of Herpestes paludosus* (No. 61. 6. 1.3) 
has the tarsus hairy beneath, while in another specimen it is quite 
naked. 
The hair of the body is generally clothed with annulated fur, 
without any special markings on either shoulders, sides, or belly ; 
while a few have neck-markings, and one or two species have uni- 
formly-coloured fur. In all the African forms the hair seems to be 
more or less annulated; but in three Asiatic species it is not so, 
The ears are short and rounded. There is no scent-gland between 
the penis and testes; but the anus often opens into the middle of 
a sac-like depression, deepest on its hinder side, into which depres- 
sion more or less numerous anal glands and glandular follicles open. 
The skull is elongated, with postorbital processes which are long 
and pointed, generally enclosing the orbit posteriorly, though some- 
times not nearly joining the malar. As Prof. Flower has pointed 
out*, the auditory bulla is somewhat pear-shaped—the larger, 
rounded end being turned backwards and somewhat outwards, a 
well-marked transverse constriction separating the hinder (and here 
outer) chamber from the (also dilated and bullate) anterior (and 
inner) chamber. As Prof. Flower has also remarked, the aperture 
of communication in the osseous partition between the two chambers 
is rather larger than in the Civets, Genets, and Paradoxures. 
There is always an alisphenoid canal; but thisis very short. The 
external auditory opening is very small and triangular, one angle being 
directed downwards. There is a foramen or a notch in the floor of 
the anterior (and inner) chamber of the bulla a little within the opening 
of the auditory meatus; and thus we have here an incipient defect 
of ossification in the floor of that passage; in Herpestes urva this 
defect is more marked, being rather a fissure than a foramen. The 
1 «Zoology of Weslern Yunnan,’ p. 168. 2 On Jan. 3, i882. 
* Or H. galera. This is the Vansire of Buffon, Hist. Nat. vol. xiii. p. 157, 
eel 
P'VP.Z.S, 1869, p. 20 and fig, 9. 
