Viverra Civetta. Linn.

The group of animals to which we have next to turn our attention is perhaps the most puzzling, and certainly the least understood, among the true Carnivora; hence there exists no little difficulty in defining its limits and distinguishing the species which compose it. Under the generic name of Viverra, Linn?us comprehended a series, or, to speak more properly, a congeries, of quadrupeds, differing from each other so remarkably in form, in structure, and in habits, as to render it absolutely impossible to find characters by which they might be circumscribed and isolated from their fellows. His definition of the genus therefore, although purposely[100] expressed in terms the most vague and indistinct, neither excludes such animals as from their obvious affinities he could not refrain from referring to other groups, nor includes full one half of the species which he has arranged beneath it. The Ichneumon of the Nile, the Suricate of the Cape, the Coati of South America, the Stinking Weasels of the North, the Civet of Barbary, the Genette of the East, the Ratel of South Africa, and others equally distant in affinity, were sweepingly compelled into this ample receptacle, which was converted into a genuine “refuge for the houseless,” in which every carnivorous quadruped, known, unknown, or imperfectly known, that appeared to be without a place elsewhere, was charitably afforded a temporary asylum.

In this arrangement, which brought animals truly digitigrade, with retractile claws, tongues covered with sharp papill?, canine teeth of great power, and molars formed for tearing flesh, consequently in a high degree sanguinary and carnivorous in their habits, into close and intimate contact with others, which are positively plantigrade, with exserted claws, smooth tongues, and teeth of little power and evidently incapable of lacerating animal food, and which are therefore in all cases more or less, and in several instances wholly, vegetable eaters, it was impossible for naturalists long to coincide. The genus thus formed presented so heterogeneous a combination, that the difficulty was rather where to stop in the dispersion of the dissimilar materials of which it was composed, than where to commence the necessary operation; and in consequence nearly a dozen genera, not hanging together in one continued series, but scattered through various parts of the system, and most of them[101] essentially distinct, have been the result of the dismemberment of this single group.

The true Civets, to which the genus Viverra is now restricted, yield in the extent of their carnivorous propensities to the cats alone, whom they approach very closely in many points of their zoological chara............