Fauna of Madagascar 187 



better acquaintance, have to be deleted from them as varieties, or 

 as the young or the sexes of other known species. The species 

 noticed by Messrs Schlegel and Pollen furnish examples of this. 

 The first in the list, Lemur Macaco, turns out to have two quite dis- 

 tinct dresses — one black, that of the male, the Lemur niger, Geoffr., 

 and the other reddish yellow (subject to considerable variation), that 

 of the female, the Lemur leucomystax, Bart. ; and the experience of 

 our authors, derived from a long series of specimens of all ages, is, that 

 these special colours are distinctive of the male and female from 

 their very youth, although variable in degree of intensity of colour- 

 ing, especially in the female. The results in clearing up the 

 synonomy of species is remarkable. From their study of the 

 animals in life and in their own country, it appears that the most 

 of the characters on which authors have erected new species and 

 even genera, are not specific, but merely individual. 



The weeding out of species thus accomplished, knocks oft" besides 

 the above corrections, five of Dr Gray's species, and six of 

 Geoffrey St Hilaire"s. We should have expected that, after 

 the warning conveyed by the discovery and correction of so 

 many mistakes of others, Messrs Schlegel and Pollen would 

 themselves have been careful to avoid such errors themselves; 

 but they are no better than their neighbours, and sin with 

 their eyes open. There are two species of Lemur described 

 from the Commoro Islands, but none have been signalized from 

 the easternmost of these islands, viz., Mayotte. Our authors have, 

 however, got a species from it, and as they cannot get it quite to 

 agree with the description of either of the other two species, or with 

 the Madagascar species, to which all three may belong, L. collaris, 

 (it being a little paler in colour of fur), they have given it a new 

 name, L. Mayottensis. 



M. Pollen gives an account of the habits of the Lemurs, 

 which our knowledge of them, derived from the study of them 

 in our zoological gardens, has somewhat anticipated; still, the 

 history of a naturalist's actual experience in procuring specimens, 

 living or dead, necessarily contains much that is interesting. To 

 us the most interesting point in their economy, is the resemblance 

 of their habits and mode of life to those of the Opossums and other 

 marsupial animals. Like them they are nocturnal animals, and 

 like them some of them live in hollow trees with two entrances. 

 The interest of such similarities lies in the fact that there are also 

 anatomical and structural as well as external resemblances between 



