VITEEEIB^. 43 



The impulse that Cuvier gave to zoology by the study of the ske- 

 letons and teeth of Mammalia, as shown in the ' Ossemens Fossiles,' 

 made such an impression on the succeeding students of zoology, that 

 most of them, overlooking the importance that Cuvier himseK at- 

 tached to external characters, have confined themselves far too ex- 

 clusively to the characters offered by these parts, overlooking the 

 fact that bones and teeth are liable to vary like other parts of the 

 animal, and that characters in the teeth that may be of great im- 

 portance in most groups may be of comparatively little value in the 

 others. Thus in the Paradoxuri, which every one must allow form 

 a very natural group, weU characterized by its habits as well as its 

 external character, the skulls and the flesh-teeth offer such varia- 

 tions in form in the different species that they would be considered 

 good generic characters in any other tribe of Yiverridse. 



The notes on the skull and teeth in this work are always taken 

 from those of the adult animal, unless it is stated to the contrary. 



The Viverridse have been divided into many genera, some only 

 containing a single species, while one or two other genera have been 

 left as magazines containing a number of heterogeneous species 

 which had not been particularly examined. The characters of some 

 of the published genera have not been made out on any uniform 

 plan. Indeed that is the system of the day, to search out some 

 animal which has some strildng character, and to form it into a 

 genus, leaving the greater number of species in the family under 

 the old generic denomination, which, when examined with care, 

 have quite as distinct characters. This is an evil which requires 

 remedying ; and I have tried to obviate it by submitting aU the 

 species of the group to the same kind of revision as M. Geoffrey 

 submitted the old species when he rearranged the collection in the 

 Jardin des Plantes more than half a century ago. 



M. Temminck, in the 'Esquisses Zoologiques,' p. 100, has inquired 

 if Herpestes Widdringtonii is a species or a local variety. He had 

 never seen the animal; but this shows the spirit in which he seems 

 always to have looked on the species described by others which were 

 not in his museum. In the same work he gives a short resvmS of the 

 species of the genera Herpestes and Paradoxuriis, and states that the 

 catalogues are encumbered with many double and triple emplois, 

 which must be erased from the systematic catalogue. After citing 

 some examples of species which have been described nearly simul- 

 taneously by zoologists living in distant countries, as H. urinator, 

 H. palvdosus, H. peniaMatus, and Cynietis Steedmani (which cer- 

 tainly are not instances deserving much blame, especially when we 

 consider the many oases in which M. Temminck himself has described 

 species in Holland which had been long previously described in 

 England), he proceeds to propose to unite some species which are, 

 in my opinion, perfectly distinct (some even belonging to different 

 sections of the genus) according to characters that are almost uni- 

 versally ad'opted, and which he himself uses in other places. In 

 the revision of the genus Paradoxurus in his monograph, and again 

 in the above work, he has united together species which have not 



