148 THE NATURAL HISTORY EEYIEW. 



Ponblanque has forwarded along with his letter announcing the 

 prodigium. The latter consists of the deposition of one Mohained 

 Effendi Ashmani — a veterinary surgeon— before the police at Cairo 

 on the 27th June, 1864, and states that, on the previous day, the said 

 Mohamed had proceeded, "in pursuance of instructions received, to 

 "the house of one Ibrahim, a master marbler, situate at Darb el 

 "Ahraar, to examine a mule, which had given an offspring. It 

 " appears that the said mule had been covered by an ass, as the off- 

 " spring is a jennet. The mule is twenty-two years of age, and as 

 " she has no milk, which is indispensable to maintain the jennet, 

 " directions were given for feeding it," 



Although Mr. Fonblanque has no personal knowledge of this 

 case, he does not believe that " any intentional deception has been 

 practised." " No attempt has been made to turn the affair to profit 

 by exhibition or otherwise — in fact, it furnished considerable annoy- 

 ance to the owner of the animal." 



6. The Dentition of the Aye-Aye. 



The anatomy of the Aye- Aye {Cliiromys maJagascariensis) formed 

 the subject of a paper read by Dr. W. Peters, before the Berlin Aca- 

 demy, on the 14th of April last, in the course of which he gave some 

 interesting particulars relative to the milk-teeth of this animal. 

 Professor Owen's valuable essay on this genus has made us acquainted 

 with several new points in which it approaches the Lemurs, whilst, 

 -on the other hand, the structure of its incisor teeth, which are 

 covered with enamel at the front only, and are not, as BlainviUe has 

 stated, entirely surrounded by it, shows an important relation to the 

 Eodents. It is, therefore, a point of some interest to study the milk- 

 dentition of the genus, and to ascertain whether Blainville's supposi- 

 tion as to the presence of teeth between the molars and incisors during 

 the primary dentition be true or not. No teeth are found between 

 the two large incisors, where, according to Blainville's conjecture, there 

 should be another pair of smaller incisors during immaturity. On 

 each side, however, behind, and at some little distance from them, 

 nearly in front of the upper maxillary, is a very small deciduous incisor; 

 and, at the front end of the upper maxillary, a somewhat stronger but 

 shorter canine, further backwards in the upper jaw are two molars, 

 the first of which is small and 4eciduous, but the second precisely 



