138 MR. R. I. POCOCK ON EXTERNAL 



suggest, for example, that in the fore paw the carpal pads are 

 separated from the plantar pad by a continuous tract of hair, 

 and that in the hind paw the plantar pad is similarly cut off 

 from the two juxtaposed narrow ridges of naked skin that 

 traverse the underside of the metatarsus. I have not examined 

 the feet of G. tigrina and can say nothing of that species ; but in 

 G. rubiginosa and G. pardina that condition does not obtain, at 

 all events in the specimens I have seen. The pads are smooth, 

 the area between the digital and plantar pads is thickly covered 

 with hair, and the toes are webbed up to the proximal ends of 

 the digital pads. The plantar pads are normally trilobed, but 

 there are a large pollical and a hallucal lobe in contact posteriorly 

 with the internal lateral lobe of the plantar pad of the fore and 

 hind feet respectively. A naked strip of skin passes from the 

 digital pad of the pollex and hallux to the corresponding lobe of 

 the plantar pad. The carpal pad is antero-posteriorly elongate 

 and manifestly bilobed, the external or ulnar element is much 

 larger than the internal, the latter is connected with the pollical 

 lobe by a naked strip of skin and a corresponding strip extends 

 forwards from the large lobe of the carpal pad to the posterior 

 external angle of the plantar pad. Hence the hairy patch im- 

 mediately behind the plantar pad is completely cut off by naked 

 skin from the hairs clothing the rest of the underside of the paw. 

 Similarly in the hind feet, the two contiguous ridges of naked, 

 skin, the outer of which extends farther up the metatarsus than 

 the inner, diverge inferiorly and are continued as narrow strips 

 of naked skin to the postero-external and internal angles of the 

 plantar pad, circumscribing a long triangular hairy area. 



The claws are retractile and, except those of the hallux and 

 pollex, are protected externally by a lobe of hairy skin. Those of 

 the fore foot, excluding the pollex, are protected on the outer side 

 by a small lobe of skin, the lobes of the 2nd and 5th being smaller 

 than of the 3rd and 4th, while the 3rd has, in addition, a larger 

 internal lobe, similar to but relatively smaller than that of 

 Viverra zibetha. In the hind foot, the claws of the 3rd and 4th 

 digits are protected externally by small lobes. That is the con- 

 dition observed in a male specimen of G. rubiginosa (text-fig. 3, 

 C, D) ; but probably the size of these lobes will be found to vary 

 considerably in different species, for in the fore foot of an example 

 of G. dongolana the lobes are all smaller than in that of G. rubi- 

 ginosa, the lobes on the 2nd and 5th digits and the internal lobe 

 on the 4th being scarcely perceptible. 



The feet of a specimen of G. dongolana, from Berbera, resemble 

 those described above, except that the underside of the pollex and 

 hallux is hairy, there being no strip of naked skin joining their 

 digital pads with the corresponding lobes of the plantar pad, and 

 that in the hind foot the lower divergent ends of the two ridge- 

 like pads are not connected by means of naked strips of integu- 

 ment with the posterior angles of the plantar pad, the area below 



