Lect. VII.] CRESTED SKULL OF TENKEC. 171 



several months of sleep, continuously. Also, she has 

 defended him and all his family, making his working- 

 day coat sharper than a thorn-hedge, so that he who 

 would take him must himself be well fenced and 

 armed. The Tenrec is one of the largest of the In- 

 sectivora, and his large bony skull is crested behind 

 like that of a Tiger or Hyaena, so that his temporal 

 muscles must be of great strength. Yet the action of the 

 jaws cannot be quite like that of a Tiger or a Hysena, as he 

 has no cheek bones. The teeth are very strong and 

 sharp-crested, so that the larger Beetles, and the lesser 

 Vertebrata, are easily broken up by him ; everything of 

 this kind is grist to his strong mill. The ear-drums are 

 like those of the Hedgehog, the tympanic bone being of 

 a low and prototherian type ; it is supplemented by 

 laminae or wings that grow from the base of the hinder 

 sphenoidal bone, and thus the basis-cranii is excavated, 

 as it were, as in Crocodiles or Birds. I consider this 

 character to be the most typical of any as an Insecti- 

 vorous diagnostic ; and yet it is not constant. There is 

 nothing constant in the order; it is a sort of low, 

 tentative, transitional group, and a zoologist has to take 

 certain characters, many of them in the soft parts, relat- 

 ing to the reproduction of the species, and make the best 

 of them he can. In passing, I may remark that the 

 Tenrec is more prolific than that most productive, old- 

 fashioned, generalised herbivore — the Sow. I have heard 

 of this creature having sixteen young at a birth ; the 



