98 DESCRIPTION 
apparently united by no connecting links ; and many 
others, more particularly among the larger hoofed 
quadrupeds, in which we have no reason to suppose 
that any such connecting links exist in the actual 
state of things: but in the one case we have daily 
opportunities of verifying the general law by the 
discovery and introduction of new animals from re- 
mote and unexplored regions; and in the other, the 
combined researches of modern zoology and geology 
have brought to light numerous genera and species, 
long since swept from the surface of the earth by 
various convulsions of nature and the consequent 
changes produced in the physical character of the 
globe which fill up the chasms that would otherwise 
appear among the forms and characters of existing © 
animals. 
“The little animal which forms the subject of the 
present memoir affords a striking illustration of the 
truth of these reflections. It forms, in truth, the 
type of a genus which connects the family of the 
civets with that of the dogs, in all their most essen- 
tial characters; participating with the one in its 
organs of mastication, and with the other in those of 
locomotion, and consequently ranging with the Pro- 
teles of M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, as a second 
genus intermediate between these two groups. The 
Proteles, however, partakes, in some degree, of the 
characters of the Hy@enas ; the present animal, as we 
shall presently demonstrate more at large, is more 
