THE OTHER BEASTS 369 



" flying- lemur " or Galeopithecus. It is now generally 

 placed, as we have placed it, in this same order. This is 

 done, however, much less from any positive resemblance 

 it possesses to other insectivores than from the difficulty 

 of knowing where else to put it, and a disinclination 

 to rank it as forming an entire order by itself. At one 

 time it was placed with the bats, as it was before placed 

 with the lemurs. But it certainly has no true affinity 

 with either. 



As to this species, Mr. Alfred R. Wallace tells us : * 



"Another curious animal, which I met with in Singa- 

 pore and in Borneo, but was more abundant in Sumatra, 

 is galeopithecus flying lemur. The creature has a broad 

 membrane extending all round its body to the extremities 

 of the toes, and to the point of the rather long tail. 

 This enables it to pass obliquely through the air from 

 one tree to another. It is sluggish in its motions, at 

 least by day, going up a tree by short runs of a few 

 feet, and then stopping a moment as if the action was 

 difficult. It rests during the day, clinging to the trunks 

 of trees, where its olive or brown fur, mottled with 

 irregular whitish spots and blotches, resembles closely 

 the colour of the mottled bark, and no doubt helps to 

 protect it. Once, in a bright twilight, I saw one of these 

 animals run up a trunk in a rather open place, and then 

 glide obliquely through the air to another tree, on which 

 it alighted near its base, and immediately began to ascend. 

 I paced the distance from the one tree to the other, and 

 found it to be seventy yards ; and the amount of descent 

 I estimated at not more than thirty-five or forty feet, or 

 less than one in five. This I think proves that the 

 animal must have some power of guiding itself through 

 the air, otherwise in so long a distance, it would have 

 little chance of alighting exactly upon the trunk. It 

 feeds chiefly on leaves. The brain is very small and it 

 possesses such remarkable tenacity of life, that it is 

 exceedingly difficult to kill it by any ordinary means. 



* "Malay Archipelago," 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 135. 



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