24 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



they will be considered as geographical races of the 

 same animal, thus following the arrangement of the 

 Leyden Museum.^ 



These creatures, then, are of nocturnal habit; they 

 pass the daytime asleep, suspended from a lofty 

 bough with all four feet together, and in this strange 

 topsy-turvy attitude much resemble a large fruit. 

 They have also been observed clinging motionless 

 hour after hour to tree trunks. Cobego are said 

 in Java to frequent isolated hills with an abundant 

 growth of young trees ; in the Malay peninsula they 

 similarly live in the densest and most inaccessible 

 jungles. At night the flying lemur becomes lively, 

 running up the tree trunks and continually stopping 

 with a jerk ; probably this is to baffle any possible 

 enemy, since by such abrupt pauses the cobego, 

 mottled and silent, would seem to have vanished into 

 the substance of the tree!^ In addition to these 

 gymnastics, the flying lemur leaps fearlessly from 

 considerable heights, and, buoyed up by its expanded 

 membranes, may sail obliquely for some hundred 

 yards before it reaches another tree. The tail 

 probably acts as a rudder and may modify the shock 



1 This institution is remarkable for its rich series of cobego, consisting 

 of twenty mounted specimens and nine preserved in alcohol. The skele- 

 ton of a female obtained from Java in 1S64 is also in the collection. It 

 seems after all doubtful -vvhether tliere is more than one species of tlying 

 lemur, the Dutch naturalists, with their abundant material, making no 

 distinction, while a skull received by the Royal College of Surgeons, per 

 Mr. Cuming, from the Philippines, was actually referred to the eommun 

 species by the late Sir W. H. Flower. 



2 The writer has noticed that the Indian palm si^uirrel makes .similar 

 stoppages when running over a floor. 



