2 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



approximated that the small pug nose seems almost 

 crowded out of the face: in the dried skull the orbits 

 are very wide and deep. The feeble jaws indicate 

 a diet at least partly insectivorous; beneath the 

 tongue is the small cartilaginous plate or sublingua 

 which occurs in many lemurs, and is supposed by 

 Professor Gegenbaur to correspond to the reptilian 

 tongue. The fingers and toes are markedly 

 elongated; they expand at the tips to flattened discs, 

 which perhaps exercise a true suctorial action, like 

 the adhesive pads of the myxopoda bat of Mada- 

 gascar. Be this as it may, a stuffed tarsier in the 

 Manchester Museum has the tips of the fingers 

 concave underneath; one can well understand the 

 value of such natural cupping-glasses to an arboreal 

 animal like the present, whose life might depend on 

 the tenacity of its grip. Some of the toe-nails are 

 pointed and erect — not applied closely to the flesh 

 as in ourselves. The innermost or "great" toe is flat ; 

 the middle ones are pointed and erect ; while the 

 remaining outer ones are again flat. The long tail 

 is remarkable for being haired at root and tip, naked 

 in the middle; it probably counterpoises the body in 

 leaping. The foot exhibits a remarkable elongation 

 of the ankle (a very rare feature in mammals), so 

 that the animal is supported on a pair of natural 

 stilts. 



The lenofth of the tarsier's ankle is due to the 

 increased size of the calcanear and navicular bones: 



