473 



INDIAN CIVETS. 



FROM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS BY DR. MCCLELLAND AND 

 B. H. HODGSON, ESQ. 



" The zoologist has no greater difficulty to encounter in the mere de- 

 scriptive part of his duty than in drawing just conclusions as to the 

 specific value of characters in animals nearly allied to each other, and 

 there is nothing of more importance to know, than the amount of 

 variation nature is capable of assuming in a single form, and the cir- 

 cumstances to which such variations are due. 



" We should not generally lay any great stress on slight shades of 

 difference in colour, but there are some groups in which the distribution 

 of particular spots and markings on the external covering is of much 

 more importance than in others. In the Ferce, or Cats, for instance, as 

 well as in their corresponding types throughout the animal kingdom, 

 we often observe each species distinguished not merely by the number, 

 size, and colour of spots, but by the particular forms these assume on 

 various parts of the body. It is curious also to observe this law of 

 isographism, if we may use such an expression, the more constant in 

 those species whose form and habits approach nearest to each other, and 

 which it would consequently be most difficult to distinguish but for the 

 constancy of some peculiar marks. Until the time of Buffon, the dif- 

 ference between the. Civet and the Zibeth was unobserved, both being of 

 nearly the same form and colour, but the number of dark marks on the 

 tail being different in the two, might have earlier led to a comparison 

 of the number and form of the vertebral bones of which the organ is 

 constructed, when a difference we may presume would have been de- 

 tected that could only be accounted for by the ordinary laws of varia- 

 tion in animals of distinct species. Strange to say, however, that long 

 after the difference between the animals in question had been first sug- 

 gested, naturalists preferred dealing in opinions to searching for facts ; 

 and so slow is the discovery of truth, that it required some thirty years 

 to reconcile naturalists to what they had been unaccustomed to suppose 

 in this instance. 



"The Civet (Viverra civetta) is most abundant in the hottest parts of 

 Africa and in Abyssinia, where the animal is reared and an extensive 

 trade carried on in civet, a peculiar odoriferous substance like musk, 

 once very fashionable in medicine, and also as a perfume. 



"The Zibeth (Viverra zibetta) has been found in the Philippine 

 Islands, from whence the animal figured and described by M. F. Cuvier 

 seems to have been brought ; but it is said also to belong to India, but 

 on what authority I have not the means of ascertaining. 



" Colonel Sykes found Viverra rasse, Horsf. in the woods of the 

 table lands east of the western ghauts,* and V. indica, a very nearly 

 allied species to the latter, in the forests of the western ghauts. More 



* Proc. Zool. Soc. 14th Feb., 1832. 



