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THE LIBRARY
OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

from heel to end of the nails, 4, the longest claw or nail, 11, the ear 14, the longest hair of the body, 4. The aspect is entirely that of a long-tailed Badger, with somewhat smaller head and longer finer fur than usual. The small head is conico-depressed with remote ears and eyes, and sharp elongated face. The muzzle or nude extremity of the nose is clearly defined, rounded, prolonged beyond the teeth, and has an abrupt oblique termination in front. The oval nostrils are opened entirely to the front, their lateral prolongation being merely linear and very much curved. The lips are thin and almost void of moustaches; and there is a still fainter indication of the tufts proper to the cheeks, chin, and eyebrows. The small pig-like eyes are situated midway between the ears and tip of the snout. The ears are oval, well developed and tending to a point. The helix is unfissured and the interior of the ears void of membranous processes, but hid with hair which amply covers these organs inside and out and ends in a full diffused, yet somewhat pointed tuft. The neck and body are rather elongated yet full, and appear even heavy from the copiousness, length and free set of the double pelage. The limbs are low, stout and suited only to slow action on the ground, with the heel very slightly raised, but admirably fitted for digging; pentadactylous before and behind the hands larger and stonger than the feet, and furnished with huge fossorial claws more than doubly larger than those of the hind extremities. The palm is entirely nude to the wrist, save only a small central tuft of wool-like hair, and the inferior surface of the digits is likewise quite nude. The palm is not a full soft mass nearly enveloping the digits and hardly distinguishable into balls or pads, as in the Bears and Bear-badgers (Ursitax), but is hard, spare of flesh, and distinctly divided into pads which take in only the bases of the four fingers; form a crescented series of irregular shape and diminishing in size from the outside to the inside of the foot. The 5th digit or thumb has no basal pad, it being short and small. The corpal pad is void, large and placed on the exterior side of the palm at its base. The fingers, of medial length and stout, are united as far forward as the posteal edge of the terminal pads by a strong membrane not susceptible of much expansion. Their pads form a curvate regular series to the front, like the basal tier abovenoticed, the two central fingers being nearly equal and the two laterals also, interse. The small feeble thumb

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is so much withdrawn from the front that the anteal edge of its terminal pad barely touches the posteal edge of the same pad in the index. The termino-digital balls or pads are very large, suited to keep the great claws from the ground and thus to enable the animal to walk without that inversion of the claws, to which the Ant-eater and Pangolin are reduced. Of the planta or sole of the hind feet one-third, reckoning from the heel to the end of the toes, is thickly covered with woolly hair: the rest is nude. There is no metatarsal pad to answer to the metacarpal one; but otherwise what has been said of the palm will suffice to explain the structure of the planta, inclusive of its digits. The claws of the four feet are typically fossorial, diggers in perfection, being large strong, moderately curved, compressed, with round backs and sharp edges below, except near the points where they are widened and scooped. The claws of the hind feet, as already noted, are very much smaller, and more nearly equal in size in all the 5 digits.

The tail with the hair exceeds of the length of the animal, and is equal to a without the hair. Like the body it is pretty uniformly dressed in long hair extending much beyond the true tail, which is gradually attenuated from a thickish base. The pelage, or fur, is of two sorts, hair and wool, both rather fine, both ample, and both of free set, that is, laxly applied to the skin. The head is dressed in short close hair only. The hair of the limbs is rather looser and longer, and has a very little wool at its base: it is harsh and thick but not elongated as on the body. On the belly the hair is about as long as on the limbs, but scanter much in quantity, and rather woolly. On the body hair is above 4 inches long, and the wool above 2 inches. On the tail there is no wool, and the hair is an inch shorter than it is on the back. The hair is fine, elastic, strong, straight, and somewhat flattened towards the points, but not undulated. The wool is wavy, as usual, and about half the length of the hair. The anal pouch is very noticeably large and has pretty evidently the form of that organ peculiar to the badger, though its particulars cannot be safely described from any but a fresh subject. The teats are six, remote and ventral, or 2 inguinal and 4 ventral. The papillæ of the tongue are pointed and even corneous, but minute enough to make it feel smooth. The scull is 5 inches long, 2 high and 23 wide between the zygoma. It is very

* English Règne Animal, II. 271 et 30,

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