Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/30

VI proper places, several questions on which wide differences of opinion exist. Thus many excellent naturalists regard as of ordinal rank subdivisions such as, for instance, the Lemuroidea and Proboscidea, classed by Professor Flower as suborders.

The descriptions of the genera and species in the following pages have been taken from specimens, whenever any were accessible: in the few cases in which, for want of available specimens, the characters are copied from descriptions by previous writers, the fact is stated. The measurements are taken from various sources, and, whenever possible, dimensions of freshly-killed animals, or, in the case of the smaller forms, of perfect examples preserved in spirit, have been selected. The length of the head and body from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail and the length of the tail are naturally of little value when taken from skins; these two dimensions are given, when possible, in the following pages, the tail measurement being without the hair, if data are available. Other measurements often cited are those of the ear, usually from the crown of the head, sometimes from the external base or from the oinfice, and of the pes or hind foot, including the tarsus, from the joint corresponding to the heel in man and the hock in a horse to the end of the longest toe, the claws not being included, unless their inclusion is specified. In particular cases other dimensions are added, for instance the forearm in bats.

Two measurements of the skull are generally given:—the basal length, from the anterior or lower margin of the foramen magnum to the anterior border of the premaxillaries, the incisor teeth not being included; and the zygomatic breadth, across the widest part of the zygomatic arches. The extreme length of the skull sometimes recorded is either from the posterior surface or from the supraoccipital to the end of the premaxillaries, or, in some skulls, to the end of the nasals.

The notes on distribution and habits are compiled from various writers, especially from the works of Jerdon, Blyth, Hodgson (inclusive of the MS. notes on his drawings in the Zoological Society's library), Elliot, Kelaart, Tickell (also including his MS. notes), Sterndale, McMaster, Forsyth, Sanderson, and others, supplemented by my own observations during a residence of more than 20 years in India, in the course of which time, whilst employed in the Geological Survey of the country, I visited many parts of India and Burma, and became acquainted with most of the wild animals in their native haunts.