176 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
to England and presented to the Zoological Society by 
Lieutenant Vidal, who accompanied the expedition for 
the formation of the projected colony at Fernando Po, 
where these animals were found in such plenty as to 
afford a staple article of food to the inhabitants. It 
has been conjectured, on very probable grounds, that 
they are not indigenous in the island, but had been 
brought thither from the East by the Portuguese who 
were formerly settled there ; but the space interposed 
between the two regions can scarcely be regarded as 
conclusive evidence of their having been introduced 
into the colony, while we have such striking instances 
of animals common to India and the West of Africa as 
are furnished by the Lion, the Leopard, the Chetah, 
the Hysena, and the Ratel. 
Leaving this question to be determined by future 
investigation, we adopt, although not without some hesi- 
tation, the views of M. Cuvier, and regard the animal 
for the present as furnishing the type of a new genus, 
to which we would add, as a second species, the Landak 
of Marsden's History of Sumatra. In teeth and in the 
organs of motion it corresponds, as the distinguished 
zoologist first quoted informs us, with the Common 
Porcupine, from which it differs chiefly in the form of 
the head ; the line of its profile, instead of being elevated 
into a curve of large extent, passing in almost a straight 
direction from the occiput to the extremity of the nose. 
In these respects it agrees with M. Frederic Cuvier's 
genus Acanthion, founded on this very character ob- 
served by him on two skulls preserved in the Paris 
Museum, the one from Java, and the other, in all pro- 
bability, from Africa. These coincidences would have 
induced us to consider the two genera as identical, were 
it not that the Baron Cuvier has omitted all mention of 
that established by his brother, although the materials 
