42 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
animals have become more completely known, be 
adopted as the foundation of a generic distinction. 
Those which compose the section to which the Napu 
belongs are of very diminutive stature, being the small- 
est and the most delicate of all the Ruminating Quad- 
rupeds, and are on that account, no less than in 
consideration of the rarity of their appearance in this 
quarter of the globe, entitled to be regarded as objects 
of peculiar interest. 
The characters by which the genus Moschus, as at 
present defined, is circumscribed, are plain and simple. 
It -might indeed be sufficient to mention the entire 
want of horns or of bony protuberances in both sexes 
and at all ages, to distinguish them at once from every 
other group with which there is the slightest risk 
of their being confounded ; for the Camels and the 
Llamas, which alone among the Ruminants have this 
character in common, have but little similarity with 
them in any other particular. But this peculiarity is 
also accompanied by others of a scarcely less important 
kind. In their general form they nearly resemble a 
Stag in miniature; but their face is proportionally 
much more elongated in front, their legs much more 
tapering and slender, and the height of their hinder 
parts much greater in comparison with that of their 
fore quarters. Their dentition is also different: they 
have the eight incisors in the lower jaw, corresponding 
w^ith a vacant space in the upper, which are found in 
most ruminating beasts ; and they have also six molars 
on each side of either jaw ; but the crowns of the latter 
are surmounted by distinct tubercles, and the first in 
the upper and the first two in the lower are elevated 
into cutting edges and points similar to those of a 
carnivorous quadruped. In the upper jaw they have 
moreover two long canines, which in the males project 
