It gives us great pleasure to have here an opportunity of testifying our thanks to M. de Poivre, who from a real taste for natural history, and a friendship for those who cultivate it, has presented to the cabinet a great number of scarce and curious animals.
The animal called berbé, in Guinea seems to us to be the same as the fossane, and consequently that this species exists in Africa as well as in Asia. “The berbé (says Bosman) has a more pointed snout, and a smaller body, than our cat, and is speckled like the civet.” We know of no animal with which these characters so well agree as with that of the fossane.
Those who have spoken of this animal have taken it for a ferret, to which indeed it has a great resemblance; but it differs in characters sufficiently strong to warrant our considering it as a distinct species. The vansire, or, as it is called by some, the Madagascar weasel, of which place it is a native, has twelve grinders in its upper jaw, while the ferret has only eight; and the lower grinders, though ten in number in both animals, are neither alike in shape nor situation. Besides, the vansire differs in the colour of its hair from all ferrets, though those, like every other animal which man is careful of rearing and increasing, vary so much in colour, that there is a difference even between male and female.
To us it appears, that the animal mentioned by Seba as the weasel of Java, and which, he says, the natives call koger-angan, and afterwards spoken of by Brisson by the name of the ferret of Java, may possibly be the same animal as the vansire, at least it comes nearer to the vansire than to any animal at present known; but Seba’s description is not sufficiently complete to establish a just comparison, which is absolutely necessary to form a solid and explicit judgment.
THE MAKI.[AT]