28 THE WANDERINGS OF ANIMALS [OH. 



ant-eating edentates, Myrmecophaga tetradactylus, 

 and Cydothiirus didactylus, as well as the climbing 

 porcupines, Symtheres ; Cercoleptes caudivolvuliis, 

 the kinkajou, with its indiarubber-like tail-tip, is a 

 representative of the carnivores. 



Another feature, peculiar to intensely arboreal 

 animals, is the principle of the parachute, some dis- 

 tension of the skin to break the fall. Some kinds of 

 the otherwise widely distributed frog genus Rhaco- 

 pJionis, in the Malay Islands, have the webs between 

 their fingers and toes enlarged to an almost absurd 

 extent, so that these ' flying frogs ' can glide through 

 the air in a slanting direction. 



The little ' flying dragons,' Agamid lizards of India 

 and Malaya, possess a folding parachute, with stays 

 furnished by the much lengthened posterior ribs. 

 In Borneo lives a tree-snake which by spreading its 

 ribs and thus flattening and broadening the body, 

 is said to glide from tree to tree. 



The parachute is carried to extreme perfection in 

 the now cosmopolitan bats ; less extensive parachutes 

 restricted to folds of the skin between the sides of 

 the body and the limbs, we find in other mammals, 

 mostly in the Malayan and Australian forests. For 

 instance Galeopithecus, the flying insectivore ; flying 

 phalangers among marsupials, the flying rodent Ano- 

 malurus in West Africa ; and of course flying squirrels 

 which have attained a wide holarctic range. 



