DE. SANDWITH ON THE HABITS OF THE AYE- ATE. 29 



tion I Lave learnt his habits very correctlj^ On receiving him 

 from Madagascar, I was told that he ate bananas ; so of course I 

 fed him on. them, but tried him with other fruit. I found he liked 

 dates, — ^which was a grand discovery, supposing he be sent alive to 

 England. Still I thought that those strong rodent teeth, as large 

 as those of a young Beaver, must have been intended for some 

 other purpose than that of trying to eat his way out of a cage — the 

 only use he seemed to make of them, besides masticating soft 

 fruits. Moreover, he had other peculiarities, — e.g,^ singularly large, 

 naked ears directed forward, as if for offensive rather than defen- 

 sive purposes ; then, again, the second finger of the hands is unlike 

 anything but a monster supernumerary member, it being slender 

 and long, half the thickness of the other fingers, and resembling 

 a piece of bent wire. Excepting the head and this finger, he 

 closely resembles a Lemur, 



" Now as he attacked, every night, the woodwork of his cage, 

 which I was gradually lining with tin, I bethought myself of 

 tying some sticks over the woodwork, so that he might gnaw 

 these instead. I had previously put in some large branches for 

 him to climb upon ; but the others were straight sticks to cover 

 over the woodwork of his cage, which alone he attacked. It so 

 happened that the thick sticks I now put into his cage were bored 

 in all directions by a large and destructive grub called here the 

 Moutouk. Just at sunset the Aye- Aye crept from under his 

 blanket, yawned, stretched, and betook himself to his tree, where 

 his movements are lively and graceful, though by no means so 

 quick as those of a squirrel. Presently he came to one of the 

 worm-eaten branches, which he began to examine most attentively ; 

 and bending forward his ears, and applying his nose close to the 

 bark, he rapidly tapped the surface with the curious second digit, 

 as a woodpecker taps a tree, though with much less noise, from 

 time to time inserting the end of the slender finger into the 

 worm-holes, as a surgeon would a probe. At length he came to a 

 part of the branch which evidently gave out an interesting sound, 

 for he began to tear it with his strong teeth. He rapidly stripped 

 off the bark, cut into the wood, and exposed the nest of a grub, 

 which he daintily picked out of its bed with the slender tapping 

 finger, and conveyed the luscious morsel to his mouth. 



" I watched these proceedings with intense interest, and was 

 much struck with the marvellous adaptation of the creature to its' 

 habits, shown by his acute hearing, which enables him aptly to 

 distinguish the different tones emitted from the wood by his gentle 



