ALLEN — AFRICAN CARNIVORA 
23 
PRELIMINARY NOTES ON AFRICAN CARNIVORA 
By J. a. Allen 
The purpose of these notes is to secure early record for certain 
results obtained in a study of some 600 specimens of African Carnivora 
collected by the American Museum of Natural History Expedition in 
Belgian Congo during the years 1909-1915, under the leadership of 
Herbert Lang and James P. Chapin of the scientific staff of the 
Museum, as the final report, now practically finished, will be delayed 
in publication. These notes relate in part to some of the more inter- 
esting of the new forms thus disclosed and in part to questions of 
taxonomy and nomenclature. The full report will include numerous 
illustrations, from pen drawings, of the cranial and external charac- 
ters of not only the new forms but also of the principal generic types of 
the Viverrinse and Herpestinse represented, and numerous reproduc- 
tions of field photographs of specimens in life or in the flesh, and pho- 
tographs from skins illustrating individual color variation, for which 
large series of specimens from single localities afford abundant material. 
These preliminary notes are here published with the approval of the 
American Museum authorities. The full report will form part of 
Volume XLII of the Museum Bulletin which will be exclusively 
devoted to the Congo collection of mammals. The first part of this 
volume, containing the report on the Insectivora, is already in press. 
Genus Aon 3 rx Lesson 
Lutra (part) most authors prior to 1900. 
Aonyx Lesson, Man. de Mammalogie, 1827, p. 157. Type, by monotypy, 
Aonyx delalandi Lesson (1827) = Lutra inunguis F. Cuvier (1823) == Lutra 
capensis Schinz (1821). 
Anahyster Murray, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edinburgh, II, 1860, p. 157. Type , 
by monotypy, Anahyster calaharica Murray, sp. nov., from Old Calabar, 
West Africa. Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1865, p. 129. (As a sub- 
genus of Aonyx; restricted to the clawless otters of Africa.) 
Aonyx (part) Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1865, p. 129. (Restricted to the 
Indian clawless otters.) Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (8), I, 1908, p. 
387. (Part; includes both the African and Indian species.) 
The genus Aonyx Lesson was exclusively based on the so-called claw- 
less otter of the Cape region of South Africa {Lutra capensis Schinz, 
renamed Aonyx delalandi by Lesson), of which the genus Anahyster 
Murray, based on a clawless otter from Old Calabar, is a synonym. 
