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travelling over thick wooded districts. But they have not got it. 
There are some too, as before stated, even of the New world 
monkeys themselves, to which the privilege has not been granted. 
Surely there can have been no intentional design in such a matter. 
It can only be referred to natural causes; to an accidental 
deviation from the ordinary structure of the tail in some one 
individual, or in several individuals perhaps, at the same time, 
countless generations back—found serviceable—used—improved by 
use and handed down as a legacy to posterity. This, I imagine, 
would be the Darwinian explanation, and further on I shall bring 
to your notice a remarkable case of deviation from ordinary 
habits, where we can at once point out the accident that occasioned it. 
But I will now pass to the circumstances of a small and very 
peculiar animal, the Aye-Aye (Cheiromys Madagascarienis), one 
of the Zemuride, or Lemurs, a group of the Quadrumana, 
but of a lower grade than the monkeys in their organisation ; 
Cheiromys itself being the lowest genus in its own family. 
The Lemurs are all confined to Madagascar and the adjacent 
islands. The animal immediately in question is found only in 
the deep recesses of the Madagascar forests, and is said to be very 
uncommon even there. It is about the size of a cat, with large, 
dark, bright eyes, very large naked ears, and with a peculiar 
arrangement of the fingers of the right-hand. There are four 
fingers with an opposable thumb asin the monkeys. The second, 
fourth and fifth fingers are of the ordinary thickness; and these 
fingers, along with the thumb, have all flat nails at their 
extremities, as the monkeys also have. But the third or 
middle finger is very different from the others. It is long, and 
so singularly attenuated—one might say atrophied—as almost to 
resemble a surgeon’s probe or a seamstress’s bodkin ; and further, 
instead of having a nail at the extremity like the other fingers, it 
has a slender curved claw. What purposes now does this arrang- 
ment serve? It is connected with the habits of the animal and the 
food on which it lives. It is a nocturnal animal—lives in trees, 
ee eee ee 
