GALEOPITHECID& 615 



further connected by a similar expansion passing outwards along 

 the back of the feet to the base of the claws, and, inwardly, involv- 

 ing the long tail to the tip, forming a true interfemoral membrane, 

 as in the Bats. 



The two species of Flying Lemurs, as the representatives of this 

 genus are commonly but erroneously called, live in the forests of the 



PIG. 282. Feet of Gakopithecus philippinensis. 



Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands, where 

 they feed chiefly on the leaves and fruits of trees. Their habits are 

 nocturnal, and during the daytime they cling to the trunks or limbs 

 of trees, head downwards, in a state of repose. With the approach 

 of night their season of activity commences, when they may be 

 seen gliding from tree to tree supported on their cutaneous 

 parachute, and they have been observed to traverse in this way a 

 space of 70 yards with a descent of only about one in five. 



Gakopithecus was referred by some of the older zoologists and 

 anatomists to the Bats, and by others to the Lemurs, but Professor 

 Peters's view, that it belongs to neither of these orders, and should 

 be considered an aberrant Insectivore, has been very generally 

 accepted, although, as mentioned above, the association is by no 

 means a close one. Besides differing from the Bats in the form of 

 the anterior limbs and of the double-rooted outer incisor and canine, 

 it also contrasts strongly with them in the presence of a large sac- 

 culated caecum, and in the great length of the colon, which is so 

 remarkably short in all the Chiroptera. From the Lemurs, on the 

 other hand, the form of the brain, the characters of the teeth, the 

 structure of the skull, and the deciduate discoidal placenta com- 

 pletely separate it. In a recent elaborate memoir on the myology 

 and affinities of Gakopithecus Dr. Leche l considers that we have in 

 this genus an indication of the mode in which the Insectivora were 

 modified into the Chiroptera, although it is completely off the direct 



1 Ueber die Sdugethiergattung Galcopithecus. Sv. Ale. Handl. vol. xxi. pt. xi. 



(1886). . 



