THE FLYING LEMUR 25 



of alighting. These animals carry their young with 

 them, clinging to the fur of the mother. Young 

 cobego (two only are born at a time) are blind, 

 naked and wrinkled, recalling the half-finished 

 appearance of a young kangaroo; their parachutes 

 and skinny heads also remind one of the hammer- 

 headed bat of West Africa. When at rest the 

 female clings upside down in the usual fashion, 

 suppporting her infant in a kind of pouch formed by 

 the incurved tail and its attached membrane. The 

 tail is said to have prehensile powers, a statement 

 to be borne in mind by those naturalists who follow 

 Blyth and assert that Asia possesses but one 

 arboreal placental mammal with a prehensile tail — 

 the binturong or bear cat.^ 



The cobego was they^/zV volans terneata of Seba, 

 who published his museum catalogue in 1734-65. 

 Pallas in 1780 (Proceedings of the Academy of 

 Sciences of St. Petersburg) also mentions the 

 galeopithecus. A specimen of the "flying colugo 

 Galeopithecus volans, extremely rare" fetched £\. is. 

 as lot 49 (second series) at the sale of Sir Ashton 

 Lever's museum (May- July, 1806); while Javan 

 examples (now in the National Collection) were 

 obtained by Dr. Horsfield, who used this species 

 amongst others for his classical experiments on the 



1 Colonel Tickell, the well-known Indian naturalist, has left a diawin*;- 

 which represents a cobego just leaving a tree. The tail is markedly 

 flexed. 



