146 London Insects t 



In the forests of Madagascar, where wood-eating 

 larvae are found in great numbers, there is a little 

 creature the Aye-Aye, which seems to have been 

 created, or, if we prefer the phrase, " developed," for 

 the express purpose of keeping them down. 



It is in general appearance something between a- 

 squirrel and a monkey, and has unusually perfect 

 cutting teeth, eyes, and ears the last "very large, 

 naked, and directed forwards " ; specially fitting it for 

 the kind of life it leads. 



To hunt for its food comfortably on the trees it 

 requires to have free use of its hands, and to enable it 

 to do this it has had a clasping thumb given to its 

 hind feet, with which it can hold on to a bough as a 

 monkey does; and, strangest of all, to make its equip- 

 ment for the life it leads quite perfect, the second 

 finger of the hand, instead of being shaped like all 

 the others, is " slender and long, resembling a piece of 

 bent wire." 



" One finger on each hand," writes Professor Owen, 

 who published in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society in 1863 a very complete anatomical de- 

 scription of the Aye- Aye, "has been ordained to 

 grow in length but not in thickness with the other 

 digits. It remains slender as a probe, and is provided 

 at the end with a small pad, and hook-like claw." 



The specimen dissected was kept alive for some 

 little time by Dr. Sandwith, then Colonial Secretary 

 in the Mauritius, and an extremely interesting letter 

 from him is published with Professor Owen's paper. 

 He describes the animal tapping the surface of the 

 worm-eaten boughs put into his cage, "with ears bent 

 forward and nose close to the bark," and poking his 

 slender finger every now and then into the worm 

 holes " as a surgeon would a probe," and when he 



