96 LEMURS. 



CHAPTER X. 



LEMURS. 



IN a previous chapter we have had occasion to refer to 

 Africa as an archaic kind of land containing types of 

 mammalian life which, while formerly widely spread over 

 the Old World, are now restricted to that continent. If 

 this preservation of ancient types be highly characteristic 

 of continental Africa, still more markedly is it so of the 

 large island of Madagascar, lying off its eastern coast. 

 In Africa itself many of the ancient types are more or less 

 closely allied to other living mammals, and most of them 

 belong to orders which are abundantly represented in 

 other parts of the world. Very different is, however, the 

 case with Madagascar, of which the great peculiarity is 

 that it has preserved to us a whole fauna of those remark- 

 able animals known as lemurs, which are represented else- 

 where only in Africa and the Oriental region, and there by 

 a comparatively small number of species belonging to 

 genera totally distinct from those found in Madagascar. 

 To put the matter more clearly, it may be stated that out 

 of a total of thirteen genera of living lemurs no less than 

 eight are absolutely confined to the island of Madagascar, 

 while the remaining five are distributed over Africa, India, 

 and the Malayan islands ; two out of the five being 

 African, one Indian, and two Malayan. The disproportion 

 is, however, not even adequately expressed by the above 

 statement, since, while most of the Malagasy genera are 

 represented by a considerable number of species, of those 

 found in other regions only one has more than two species, 

 while two out of the other four have but a single species 

 each. Lemurs are, indeed, in every sense the characteristic 

 mammals of Madagascar, being t'ar more common in its 

 woods and coppices than are squirrels in those of this 

 country. So common are they said to be in certain parts 

 of the island that, according to the French traveller, 



