396 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



Brisson, Linnaeus, Buffon, and all naturalists before 

 Schreber, admitted but a single species of the Mangouste 

 or Ichneumon, though Edwards had expressed a doubt con- 

 cerning the identity of his Indian Ichneumon with that of 

 Egypt. Schreber was the first who established three spe- 

 cies: viz., the Egyptian, the Mangouste of Buffon, and a 

 species which Gmelin has called the Viverra Cafra, whose 

 habitat he refers to Southern Africa, though Geoffroy 

 makes it Asiatic. Buffon, indeed, has given, in his supple- 

 ments, the figure of a large Mangouste, which, however, 

 he does not describe, and that of a smaller species, which 

 he calls Nems, now identified with the V. Cafra. Vosmaer, 

 on the other hand, has represented a Mangouste of the 

 Indies, not at all resembling that of Buffon. Such was 

 the state of the history of those curious animals, when 

 M. Geoffroy, in the " Menagerie du Museum," described 

 the Ichneumon, and separated it more forcibly from the 

 other two species than Schreber or Gmelin had done. 

 The French Menagerie has, since that time, received a 

 great number of Mangoustes from Africa and the East. 

 Among these were found distinctly characterized: 1st, 

 the Egyptian Ichneumon, Ichneumon Pharaonis ; 2d, the 

 great Mangouste of Buffon, Ichneumon major; 3d, the 

 least, Ichneumon griseus ; and 4th, the Mangouste de l'lnde, 

 Ichneumon mungo of Buffon, distinct from all the others 

 by transversal bands across the back. Having distin- 

 guished these, five others remained from Pondicherry, the 

 Cape, the Isle of France, and Java, differing from each 

 other by almost insensible shades of gray and brown, so 

 that those nearest each other seemed only varieties, while 

 the opposite extremities of the series were so unlike as 

 to look like different species. M. Geoffroy, in his de- 

 scription of Egypt, has designated them by different 

 names, and characterized them with his usual accuracy. 

 How far they may properly be considered as distinct 



