VERTEBEATA. 43 



Its mode of breaking the egg is somewhat different from that of Herpestes fasciatus, 

 which Dr. Thomson had also under observation for some time. This latter, after getting 

 the egg close to a projecting object, seizes it with the two anterior feet, and then jerks it 

 through between the hinder legs, which are raised somewhat to let the egg pass. 



Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the manuscript catalogue of the Mammalia in the Paris 

 collections, notices a specimen from Madagascar which had been collected by M. Sonnerat, 

 which he described in the following manner, under the name of Mustela striata : — " Supra 

 saturate fusca ; striis quinque longitudinalibus angustis parallelis albis ; gastraeo pallide 

 canescente, cauda basi fusca, reliqua alba ; statura Mustelae vulgaris." — Fischer, Syn. 224. 

 M. Cuvier, in the ' Regne Animal ' (ed. 2de, 144) described the same specimen under the 

 name of " La Belette rayee de Madagascar, Putorius striatus, Cuvier, de la taille de la 

 belette d'Europe, d'un brun roussatre avec cinq lignes longitudinales blanchatres ; le dessous 

 et presque toute la queue blanchatre." M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the notes to a 

 paper on some Madagascar animals in M. Guerin's Magasin de Zoologie for 1839, p. 32, 

 informs us that the specimen above described then existed in the collection, and that he had 

 convinced himself that it was a young specimen of an animal rather more than two feet long, 

 which had been sent to the Museum in 1834 by M. Goudot, under the name of Vonsire 

 blanc, and called Vontsira foutclie by the Madecasses ; and he gives a description and figures 

 of the animal and its skull, t. 18, 19, forming for it a genus which he names Galidictis. 



A few months ago the Museum purchased of Mr. Tucker of the Quadrant an animal 

 from Madagascar, which is evidently nearly allied to the Galidictis striata, but differs from 

 it in some particulars, which induce me to regard it as a second species of that genus. I 

 may remark that it agrees with all the characters assigned to that genus by M. Isidore 

 Geoffroy, except that the soles of the hind feet are more naked than he described those of 

 his genus Galidia to be, though he observes that Galidictis has the feet " presque entierement 

 semblable " to that genus ; for the naked part is nearly as broad as the foot, almost to the 

 top of the heel. The chief difference between the Museum specimen and that described and 

 figured by the two Geoffroys and Cuvier is in the colour of the tail, and I might think this 

 depended on age, if the elder Geoffroy and Cuvier did not describe the young animal as 

 being of the size of a weasel, and the younger Geoffroy the adult as having the same pecu- 

 liarity, viz., a white tail ; while our specimen has the tail of the same colour as the back, 

 and even more distinctly variegated with black and white. The stripes are narrower, rather 

 differently placed, and more equal in width than in the description and figure above quoted, 

 and they do not extend so far up the neck towards the head. 



