1 6 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



Jardin des Plantes in 1900; nothing at all is known 

 of the newly-born young. 



The first example received at the London Zoologi- 

 cal Gardens was purchased on November 12, 1890, 

 and was figured in the Illustrated London News ; 

 it died on January 24, 1905, having lived for the 

 amazing period of fourteen years in the collection, 

 and the present writer inspected it on many occasions. 

 This individual showed none of the ferocity usually 

 assigned to the species, and was tame enough to 

 come right up to the bars, though it would probably 

 have severely bitten a careless bystander. The fossa 

 is an amazingly interesting beast ; its zoological posi- 

 tion and geographical distribution (Madagascar only), 

 its reputed ferocity, its rarity and its possible descent 

 from a line of long-extinct creodont ancestors the 

 "last of the Mohicans "-render it a most suitable 

 subject for a special monograph, or a learned article 

 in some zoological magazine. 1 



The ring-tailed lemur appears to have been 

 discovered by M. de Flacourt, the Director General 

 of the French East India Company; his interesting 

 "Histoire de la grande Isle Madagascar" was 

 published at Paris in 1661, and mentions the animal 

 as the "maid vari." The present species is the 

 Lemur catta of Linnaeus, who in 1 766 included it 

 under this name in the twelfth edition of his 



1. The isolated geographical position of the Madagascar fossa renders 

 it comparable to the thylacine the only large predaceous mammal of 

 Tasmania, and about the same size. 



