822 MR. R. I. POCOCK ON THE 



of tlie metatarsal pad, but in most respects they are very diflerent. 

 The digits are shorter, closer together, with the pads larger, less 

 well defined, and the interdigital webs (although narrower) extend 

 farther up the pads, especially on the fore foot. The plantar 

 pad of the bi^oad fore foot, although Avider than long, is narrower 

 than the foot itself, indistinctly lobate, and much less deeply 

 emarginate behind; there is a single small carpal pad, representing 

 the outer * of the normal two, set a little distance behind the 

 plantar, and the area behind this and the plantar pad is partially 

 overgrown and overlapped by hairs on the inner or pollical side 

 of the foot as in some examples of Ictonyx. In the hind foot the 

 plantar pad is longer than wide, narrower than the foot, irre- 

 gularly heart-shaped, and very indistinctly subdivided. The pads 

 are granularly roughened. 



The feet of Lyncodon, judging from dried skins, are peculiar in 

 the almost complete suppression of the interdigital webs, which 

 extend only a short distance beyond the plantar pads. The 

 underside of the digits and the area between the digital and 

 plantar pads is naked, but the sides of the digits are fringed with 

 longish hairs. In the fore foot the claws are long and fossorial, 

 the plantar pad is strongly arcuate and short, the hairs of the 

 carpus encroaching upon it in the middle line behind. The 

 carpal pad is represented only by the outer moiety, which is 

 continuous distally with the outer lobe of the plantar pad. The 

 carpal vibrissje are retained, although the claws are fossorial. 



The hind foot closely resembles the fore foot, but the claws are 

 short ; and there is no trace of metatarsal pads, the metatarsus 

 being covered with hair, which extends over the middle of the 

 plantar pad. (Text-fig. 35, A, B.) 



In all the other genera of fossorial footed Mustelidaj the meta- 

 tarsal pad is retained and is of large or comparatively large size. 



In Ilelogale jyersonataf the fore foot is a little wider than the 

 hind foot, the digits are webbed to the proximal ends of the well- 

 de lined digital pads, the soles are entirely naked as far back as 

 the proximal ends of the carpal and metatarsal pads, and all the 

 pads are tolerably coarsely striated, although less coarsely than 

 in Mustela, Martes, Gulo, and Ictonyx. The fore foot otherwise 

 tolerably closely resembles tiiat of Meles, but the digits are rather 

 more separable, the digital pads are better defined, the plantar pad 

 is relatively narrower, more distinctly four-lobed, with its anterior 

 and posterior margins more curved, the two elements of the 

 carpal pad are in contact or very nearly so in the middle line, and 

 the carpal vibrissas are well developed. In the hind foot the 

 digits are markedly more widely separable than in Meles, there 



* In my paper on Taxidea and Meles (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1920, p. 428) I inad- 

 vertently detscribed the carpal pad as representing- the inner or radial carpal of 

 Meles. 



t Hodgson figured the hind foot of this species, but wrongly labelled it TJrva 

 cancrivora (Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, xvi. pi. ii.). A figure of tiie fore foot is in his 

 vmpublished drawings. 



