MONKEYS. 3 1 



and are more sluggish in their movements than true monkeys, most 

 of them being of nocturnal or crepuscular habits. They feed largely 

 on insects, eating also fruits and the eggs or young of birds. 



The most curious species are the slow lemurs of South India, 

 small tailless nocturnal animals, somewhat resembling sloths in appear- 

 ance and almost as deliberate in their movements, except when in the 

 act of seizing their insect prey ; the tarsier, or specter-lemur, of the 

 Malay Islands, a small long-tailed nocturnal lemur, remarkable for the 

 curious development of the hind-feet, which have two of the toes very 

 short and with sharp claws, while the others have nails, the third toe 

 beino- exceedingly long and slender, though the thumb is very large, 

 giving the feet a very irregular and outre appearance ; and, lastly, the 

 aye-aye of Madagascar, the most remarkable of all. This animal has 

 very large ears and a squirrel -like tail, with long, spreading hair. It 

 has large curved incisor teeth, which add to its squirrel-like appear- 

 ance and caused the early naturalists to class it among the rodents. 

 But its most remarkable character is found in its fore-feet or hands, 

 the fingers of which are all very long and armed with sharp, curved 

 claws, but one of them, the second, is wonderfully slender, being not 

 half the thickness of the others. This curious combination of charac- 

 ters shows that the aye-aye is a very specialized form that is, one 

 whose organization has been slowly modified to fit it for a peculiar 

 mode of life. From information received from its native country, and 

 from a profound study of its organization, Professor Owen believes 

 that it is adapted for the one purpose of feeding on small, wood-boring 

 insects. Its large feet and sharp claws enable it to cling firmly to the 

 branches of trees in almost any position ; by means of its large, deli- 

 cate ears it listens for the sound of the insect gnawing within the 

 branch, and is thus able to fix its exact position ; with its powerful 

 curved gnawing teeth it rapidly cuts away the bark and wood till it . 

 exposes the burrow of the insect, most probably the soft larva of some 

 beetle, and then comes into play the extraordinary long wire-like 

 finger, which enters the small cylindrical burrow, and with the sharp 

 bent claw hooks out the grub. Here we have a most complex adapta- 

 tion of different parts and organs all converging to one special end, 

 that end being the same as is reached by a group of birds, the wood- 

 peckers, in a different way ; and it is a most interesting fact that, 

 although woodpeckers abound in all the great continents, and are 

 especially common in the tropical forests of Asia, Africa, and America, 

 they are quite absent from Madagascar. We may therefore consider 

 that the aye-aye really occupies the same place in nature in the forests 

 of this tropical island as do the woodpeckers in other parts of the 

 world. 



Distribution, Affinities, and Zoological Rank of Monkets. 

 Having thus sketched an outline of the monkey-tribe as regards 

 their more prominent external characters and habits, we must say a 



