ch are necessary to the
scientific zoologist.

Another motive in thus venturing is, that the only complete history
of Indian Mammalia is Dr. Jerdon's, which is exhaustive within the
boundaries he has assigned to India proper; but as he has excluded
Assam, Cachar, Tenasserim, Burmah, Arracan, and Ceylon, his book is
incomplete as a Natural History of the Mammals of British India. I
shall have to acknowledge much to Jerdon in the following pages, and
it is to him I owe much encouragement, whilst we were together in
the field during the Indian Mutiny, in the pursuit of the study to
which he devoted his life; and the general arrangement of this work
will be based on his book, his numbers being preserved, in order that
those who possess his 'Mammals of India' may readily refer to the
noted species.

But I must also plead indebtedness to many other naturalists who have
left their records in the 'Journals of the Asiatic Society' and other
publications, or who have brought out books of their own, such as
Blyth, Elliott, Hodgson, Sherwill, Sykes, Tickell, Hutton, Kellaart,
Emerson Tennent, and others; Col. McMaster's 'Notes on Jerdon,' Dr.
Anderson's 'Anatomical and Zoological Researches,' Horsfield's
'Catalogue of the Mammalia in the Museum of the East India Company,'
Dr. Dobson's 'Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera,' the writings of
Professors Martin Duncan, Flowers, Kitchen Parker, Boyd Dawkins,
Garrod, Mr. E. R. Alston, Sir Victor Brooke and others; the
Proceedings and Journals of the Zoological, Linnean, and Asiatic
Societies, and the correspondence in _The Asian_; so that after all
my own share is minimised to a few remarks here and there, based on
personal experience during a long period of jungle life, and on
observation of the habits of animals in their wild state, and also
in captivity, having made a large collection of living specimens from
time to time.

As regards classification, Cuvier's system is the most popular, so
I shall adopt it to a certain extent, keeping it as a basis, but
engrafting on it such modifications as have met with the approval
of modern naturalists. For comparison I give below a synopsis of
Cuvier's arrangement. I have placed Cetacea after Carnivora, and
Edentata at the end. In this I have followed recent authors as well
as Jerdon, whose running numbers I have preserved as far as possible
for purposes of reference.

Cuvier divides the Mammals into nine orders, as follows. (_The
examples