Family Dipodidæ
This family contains a form of rodent similar to, yet more pronounced than, the jerboa rats, of which I have already treated. It includes the true Jerboas (Dipus), the American Jumping Mice (Zapus), the Alactaga, and the Cape Jumping Hare (Pedetes caffer). The characteristics of the family are as follows:—
“Incisors compressed; premolars present or absent; grinding teeth rooted or rootless, not tuberculate, with more or fewer transverse enamel folds; skull with the brain-case short and broad; infra-orbital opening rounded, very large (often as large as the orbit); zygomatic arch slender, curved downwards; the malar ascending in front to the lachrymal in a flattened perpendicular plate; facial surface of maxillaries minutely perforated; mastoid portion of auditory bullæ usually greatly developed; metatarsal bones elongated, often fused into a cannon bone; form gracile; front portion of body and fore-limbs very small; hind limbs long and strong, with from three to five digits; tail long, hairy. Three sub-families” (Alston On the Order Glires, ‘P. Z. S.’ 1876). The three sub-families are Zapodidæ,[28] Dipodinæ and Pedetinæ, but we have only to deal with the second.
28 Formerly Jaculinæ.
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