JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



NOVEMBER, 1848. 



Anatomy of Ailurus, Porcida, and Stylocerus, in continuation, with 

 sundry miscellaneous emendatory Notes. By B. H. Hodgson, Esq. 



In presenting to the Asiatic Society of Bengal my paper on the struc- 

 ture and habits of Ailurus, I noticed the circumstances which had tended 

 to render my account of the anatomy less full and satisfactory than I 

 could have wished, and I promised to take the first fresh opportunity to 

 rectify and complete that account. I now proceed to redeem my pledge 

 so far as my materials and the very frail state of my health have allowed 

 me so to do. Last month I obtained a couple of young Wahs alive. 

 They were taken from the nest, a perforation in the bole of a lofty 

 decayed tree, and were about half grown, male and female, alike in 

 every respect of size and colours. They must have been born in April 

 or May, and were certainly six months old when I got them. Yet they 

 had not quitted the retreat in which they were born, nor had their 

 mother ceased to tend them ; whence we may safely infer that the 

 period of infantine helplessness is much protracted in these most singu- 

 lar animals. So long as they lived they were fed with milk, or milk 

 and rice. But they died in about 15 days under the terrible process of 

 cutting the molar teeth. Each was from 12 to 13 inches long between 

 the snout and anus. Testes of male in the groin, that is void of scro- 

 tum. Penis small, sheathed, directed forwards and downwards, and 

 upon the whole assimilated to the same organ in Felis and Viverra, 

 rather than in Canis or Paradoxurus, * though void of all semblance of 



* Paradoxurus differs greatly from the Felines and Viverrines in the canine cha- 

 racter of this organ, which is large and plainly directed, in its sheath, along the abdo- 



No. XXIII— New Series. 3 r 



