A REMARKABLE MAMMAL 



My readers are not to imagine that the animal whose 

 portrait appears as a frontispiece to this work is one new 

 to science, or even one whose structure has hitherto been 

 imperfectly known. On the contrary, it has been known 

 to science for nearly a century and a quarter ; but it is 

 altogether such a peculiar and interesting creature that it 

 may well form the text of an article. 



Like so many of its cousins the lemurs, the aye-aye 

 is an inhabitant of Madagascar, from the west coast of 

 which island the first specimen known to European 

 science was brought to Paris in 1780 by the French 

 traveller Sonnerat, who discovered several other curious 

 mammals and birds. By the naturalists of that time, 

 despite the remarkable peculiarity in the structure of 

 the forepaws mentioned later on in this article, it was 

 regarded as a squirrel, and accordingly named Sciurus 

 madagascariensis. It was, however, soon after apparent 

 that, whatever might be its real affinities, it could 

 not rightly be retained in the same genus as the true 

 squirrels ; and it was accordingly renamed, at first 

 Daubentonia^ and subsequently Chiromys {Cheiromys). 

 The justification for the proposal of this second title was 

 that the first had been previously employed in botany, 

 which was then (although not now) regarded as a bar 

 to its use in zoology. And at the present day some 



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