y. The municipal authorities of the city, on whom the regulation
of such matters now depends, allow ten days. The carnival sports at Rome
anciently consisted of three divisions: (1) the races in the Corso
(formerly called the Via Lata, and taking its present name from them),
which appear to have been from time immemorial a part of the festivity;
(2) the spectacular pageant of the Agona; (3) that of the Testaccio.

Of other Italian cities, Venice used in old times to be the principal
home, after Rome, of carnival. To-day Turin, Milan, Florence, Naples,
all put forth competing programmes. In old times Florence was
conspicuous for the licentiousness of its carnival; and the _Canti
Carnascialeschi_, or carnival songs, of Lorenzo de' Medici show to what
extent the licence was carried. The carnival in Spain lasts four days,
including Ash Wednesday. In France the merry-making is restricted almost
entirely to Shrove Tuesday, or _mardi gras_. In Russia, where no Ash
Wednesday is observed, carnival gaieties last a week from Sunday to
Sunday.

CARNIVORA, the zoological order typified by the larger carnivorous
placental land mammals of the present day, such as lions, tigers and
wolves, but also including species like bears whose diet is largely
vegetable, as well as a number of smaller flesh-eating species, together
with the seals and their relatives, and an extinct Tertiary group. Apart
from this distinct group (see CREODONTA), the Carnivora are
characterized by the following features. They are unguiculate, or clawed
mammals, with never less than four toes to each foot, of which the first
is never opposable to the rest; the claws, or nails, being more or less
pointed although occasionally rudimentary. The teeth comprise a
deciduous and a permanent series, all being rooted, and the latter
divisible into the usual four series. In front there is a series of
small pointed incisors, usually three in number, on each side of both
jaws, of which the first is always the smallest and the third the
largest, the difference being most marked in the upper jaw; these are
followed by strong conical, pointed, recurved canines; the premolars and
molars are variable, but generally, especially in the anterior part of
the series, more or less compressed, pointed and trenchant; if the
crowns are flat and tuberculated, they are never complex or divided into
lobes by deep inflexions of enamel. The condyle of the lower jaw is a
transversely placed