1885.] GENUS PARADOXURUS, 781 



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

 on the history of the genus may be useful. 



That no notice of so extremely common and widely distributed 

 an Oriental type as Paradoxunts 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 Ihe British Museum,' puhlislied in 1843, the quotation runs pi. 65. 

 f. 4-(), and these are the figures called P. hondar by Temminck. Gray evi- 

 dently accuses Temminck in 1843, again in 18(i4, and once more in Lstj'.t, of 

 having figured the skull of P. f/rayi by mistake for that of P. hondar. Now 

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

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

 same plate 6.5 of Teniminck's monograph figures 1-3 represent the skull of 

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

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

 with 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 njistake, as plate .55 in Teniminck's monograph contains figures of bats. 

 The description in Temminck's work at p. ^32 is also that of P. hondar 

 (=P. niger\ .and not of P. fjrayi. 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 only case quoted. 



The second instance is the quotation, also under Paguma gragi, of " Amhlg- 

 odon dure; Jourdan, Ann. Sci. Nat. viii. 276 (18.37)." On the next page Gray 

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

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

 des Sciences Naturelles.' 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 'Annates 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 defcription 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 Biainville was perfectly right in identifying it, in his ' Osttographie,' 

 with P. Icucomystax. 



My reason for quoting these two mistakes is that in eaeli case a charge is 

 brought against another naturalist upon evidence fui-nished by Dr. Gray's own 

 blundei's. To coi'rect Dr. Gray's mistakes in detail wo\dd be a Herculean 

 labour, but unfortimately they are constantly leading otiners astray. Thus, 

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

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

 further characterized as having " legs subequal." Evidently the characters 

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

 Grocida; but in a recent article on the I'iverrida <mA\hw allies, wherein Gray's 

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

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

 than the fore limbs. 



^ Schi-eber and Gmelin, under Viverra zeylonensis ( V. eeylanica'), refer to 

 Maries phiiijypewis, Camelli, Phil. Trans, xxv. p. 2204, and Gray also refers 

 to this species under Paradoxurus zeylanicus. Camelli merely mentioned a 

 species of Marten, of which he gave an im25erfect description, amongst the 

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

 ever, have been a Paradoxurus. 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 1885, No. LI. 51 



