xxiii. 4 LEMURS 609 



Madagascar and their fossil allies; Lorisiformes for the rather similar 

 animals outside Madagascar; and Tarsiiformes for the living tarsier 

 and its Eocene relatives. The suborder Anthropoidea includes two 

 distinct types, first the New World monkeys, superfamily Ceboidea, 

 secondly the Old World monkeys, apes and man, grouped together as 

 Cercopithecoidea. 



Fig. 385. Skeleton of ring-tailed lemur. 



We propose, therefore, to arrange our examination of primates 

 around the idea of three main stocks diverging in the Palaeocene, 

 namely lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers, with an anthropoid stock arising 

 from one of these, probably the tarsioid, in the Eocene, and itself 

 early becoming separated into two lines, the New World monkeys 

 on the one hand, and Old W'orld monkeys and apes on the other 

 (Fig. 416). 



4. Lemurs and lorises 



The lemurs (Fig. 384) living in Madagascar today resemble certain 

 fossils, known as plesiadapids and adapids, that existed in various parts 

 of the world in Palaeocene and Eocene times. We may, therefore, per- 

 haps assume that they show us the characters of part at least of the 

 primate stock more than 50 million years ago. Lemurs show their 

 'primitive' nature in their habits and appearance, as well as in the de- 

 tails of their structure. They are mostly nocturnal, arboreal, insecti- 

 vorous, omnivorous, or fruit-eating animals; the name means, 'ghost', 

 but it is more interesting that they are often said to be rather like 



