682 PRIM A TES 



Suborder LEMUROIDEA. 



The Latin term Lemur was applied by Linnaeus to the typical 

 representatives of the present group of Primates, having been sug- 

 gested by the nocturnal habits and strange ghost-like appearance 

 of some of its members. As these animals had previously no 

 vernacular appellation in English, this name has been generally 

 adopted, and is now completely anglicised, making " Lemurs " in 

 the plural. The French call them Makis, and the Germans Halbaffen, 

 in allusion to their forming a transition from monkeys to ordinary 

 quadrupeds. For the same reason they are called Prosimice by 

 some systematic writers. When the name was bestowed by 

 Linnaeus only five species were known, of which one, L. volans, 

 Linn. (Galeopithecus volans of modern writers), is now removed by 

 common consent from the group. Notwithstanding the discovery 

 of many new and curious forms, the Lemurs remain a very natural 

 and circumscribed division of the animal kingdom, though no longer 

 considered a single genus, but divided up into many genera and 

 even families. 



The existing species are not numerous, and do not diverge 

 widely in their organisation or habits, being all of small or moderate 

 size, all adapted to an arboreal life, climbing with ease, and, as they 

 find their living, which consists of fruits, leaves, birds' eggs, small 

 birds, reptiles, and insects, among the branches of the trees, they 

 rarely have occasion to descend to the ground. None are aquatic, 

 and none burrow in the earth. Many of the species, although by no 

 means all, are nocturnal in their habits, spending the day in sleep- 

 ing in holes, or rolled up in a ball, perched on a horizontal branch, 

 or in the fork of a tree, and seeking their food by night. Their 

 geographical distribution is very peculiar; by far the larger pro- 

 portion of species, including all those to which the term " Lemur " 

 is now especially restricted, being exclusively inhabitants of Mada- 

 gascar, where they are so abundant and widely distributed that it 

 is said by M. Grandidier, who has contributed more than any other 

 traveller to enrich our knowledge of the structure and manners of 

 these animals, that there is not a little wood in the whole island 

 in which some of them cannot be found. From Madagascar as a 

 centre a few species less typical in character extend through the 

 African continent westward as far as Senegambia, and others are 

 found in the Oriental region as far east as the Philippine Islands 

 and Celebes. 



The following are the essential characters by which the sub- 

 order as a whole is distinguished from the Anthropoidea. Skull 

 with the orbit opening freely into the temporal fossa beneath the 

 postorbital bar (except in Tarsius) and the lachrymal foramen 



