186 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



all subsequent writers ori natural history. But this notion of 

 the affinity of the Desman, which Pallas put forth as some- 

 thing new, was not altogether so. The fact had evidently 

 been suspected by Charleton in 1677, when he designated 

 this identical animal under the name of Sorex Moscovitus. 

 The Desman, in fact, in the natural order, must follow close 

 upon the Shrews. But at the same time it must be kept 

 separate from them, and not confounded with them, as 

 Gmelin and Shaw have confounded it in their catalogues. 

 The general relations which connect these beings together 

 do not hinder them from differing in some very essential 

 parts. Their teeth do not present a similar appearance, 

 nor are they alike in number. The toes are free in one 

 set of animals and palmate in the other, and their nostrils 

 are so much unlike, that the name of horn might be not 

 inappropriately applied to that of the Desman. 



From these differences, the necessity of classing the Des- 

 man apart from the Shrews was felt by the Baron, as other- 

 wise a hiatus must have been left in the catalogue of ani- 

 mals not easily filled up. Accordingly, in the first volume 

 of his Comparative Anatomy, in a list of genera and species 

 which terminates it, he proposes the name of Mygale for 

 this new genus. 



There are several considerations, independent of the dis- 

 tinctions just noticed, which must oblige us to accede to 

 the justness of this arrangement. On the one hand the 

 number of genuine Shrews has become so very considerable, 

 that it is necessary to reject from the group every animal 

 whose attributes do not come strictly within the limits to 

 which we have confined its definition. On the other hand 

 also, the Desman, in consequence of the acquisition of a 

 new species found in France, was clearly indicated as the 

 centre of a little tribe, for the further augmentation of 

 which nothing more in all probability was wanting than a 

 belief in its existence and in the plurality of its species* 

 and a little more attention to the characteristic traits of 



