6 1 



THE PRIMATES 



xxiii. 4- 



is caniniform. The molars are triangular in some genera, in others a 

 hypocone gives them a square shape. The lower molars are of typical 

 tuberculosectorial type, with a heel. The reproduction shows several 

 primitive features. There are marked breeding-seasons and the females 

 are polyoestrous. The uterus is bicornuate and the placenta of a 



Fig. 389. Aye-Aye, Daubentonia. 

 (From a photograph.) 



Fig. 390. Slender loris, Loris. 

 (From life.) 



Fig. 391. Bush-baby, Galago, 

 (From photograph.) 



remarkably simple type, epithelio-chorial and diffuse, with villi all 

 over the surface of the chorion, which is vascularized directly by a 

 large allantois, filled with fluid. The amnion arises as folds and not by 

 cavitation as in higher primates. 



Ten genera of lemurs occur today in Madagascar, where they have 

 evidently flourished in isolation throughout the Tertiary. Indri, the 

 largest, is an animal nearly 3 ft long, able both to jump and to walk on 

 its hind legs. Earlier lemurs became larger still, the skull of the 

 Pleistocene *Megaladapis was nearly a foot long. Daubentonia 

 (= Cheiromys), the aye-aye (Fig. 389) of Madagascar, is like the 

 lemurs in many ways but has large, continually growing upper and 

 lower incisors, like a rodent. It has a very long and thin third finger, 

 which it uses, with its teeth, to find insects deep in the bark. It also 

 eats the inside of bamboo and sugar-canes among which it lives. 



