lO NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



liken the fleet-footed jerboas of the Sahara to wee 

 sprites of the desert, and the large-eyed galagoes 

 to nocturnal hobo-oblins. This last similitude 

 appears to have strongly commended itself to 

 the mind of the black man, since in Uganda 

 the natives believe the nocturnal cries of the gala- 

 goes to be the voices of devils. 



Galagoes are the only long-tailed lemurs which 

 inhabit the mainland of Africa, the remaining 

 tailed species being almost exclusively natives of 

 Madagascar. Varying from the size of a cat to 

 that of a rat, these African forms are remarkable 

 for their enormous ears, which can be folded up 

 at will of the animal, to lie pressed more or less 

 closely to the sides of the head.^ Galagoes are 

 also characterised by the great elongation of the 

 upper part of the ankle, a peculiarity, however, 

 which they share with the allied mouse-lemurs. 

 There are several species : perhaps the best known 

 is the pretty little animal known as the bush baby. 

 The bush baby or Maholi g3i[ago(Ga/a£-o mahoh) 

 — nacht apje of the Boers — is about the size of a 

 large rat, and occurs in Uganda, in Nyasaland, 

 and in South Africa, as far down as Natal. The 

 head of the bush baby is rounded and almost cat- 

 like in expression, with large eyes of a beautiful 



1 The appearance of the larger galagoes is uncanny in the extreme. 

 One in the Antwerp Zoological Gardens, as it sat on its box with its 

 enormous bat-like ears covering the sides of its head, and its great 

 eyes staring forward, seemed to resemble some weird gnome, squatting 

 in a haunted dell, rather than any creature of flesh and blood. 



