14 LLOYDS NATURAL HISTORY. 



on their hind legs by a series of bounds, holding their hands 

 over their head in a ludicrous fashion. Most of them are 

 nocturnal, or crepuscular, sleeping the greater part of the day 

 in holes or on a branch of a tree coiled up in a ball. Their 

 food consists chiefly of leaves, fruits, honey, birds' eggs, and 

 birds, or any small animals they can pounce upon. 



The Lemurs now living are divided into three families. 

 The Aye- Aye and the Tarsiers, on account of their very special 

 characters, constitute each a distinct family — named Chiro- 

 myidce and Tarsiidce. respectively — while the True Lemurs form 

 the third, the Lemiiridce^ to which all the remaining forms 

 belong. 



THE AYE- AYES. FAMILY CHIROMYID.E. 



This very aberrant family contains only one species; the 

 characters of the family and of the genus Chiro?nys are, there- 

 fore, necessarily those of the single species known. 



THE AYE-AYE. CHIROMYS MADAGASCARIENSIS. 



Schirus madagascarie?isis^ Gmel., S. N., i., p. 152 (1788). 

 Daubenionia madagascariensis, Geoffr., Decad. Philos., iv., p. 



193 (1795); Dahlbom, Studia, p. 326, t. 12. 

 Chiromys 7tiadagascariensis^ Cuv., Legons d'Anat. Comp., Tabl. 

 de Class., i (1800); Owen, Tr. Z. S., vol. v., p. t^d 

 Peters, Abhandl. K. Akad. Berlin, 1865, p. 79. 

 {Plate I.) 

 Characters. — Head short and round ; face short-snouted, with 

 a patch of bristles below the eye, between the ear and the angle 

 of the mouth ; eyes round, prominent ; eyebrows long and 

 bristly ; pupils wide, furnished with a false eyelid (a nicti- 

 tating membrane) ; ears large, rounded, directed backwards, 



