64 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



THE TRUE LEMURS. SUB-FAMILY III. 

 LEMURIN.E. 



The third sub-family of the Lemurida contains the True 

 Lemurs, which are characterised by the possession of a soft, 

 thick, and woolly fur, the head rounded behind, with a 

 specially elongated muzzle. They have small and oval ears, 

 with the exterior aspect covered with long hair, but the inside 

 naked, except round the margin. Their hind-limbs do not 

 show so great a disproportionate length compared to that oi 

 the fore-limbs, as in the next sub-family, the Indrisina. The 

 ankle-bones (tarsus) are only slightly elongated, and their toes 

 are not united by a membrane. Their long and bushy tail is 

 sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than the body. The 

 females produce one or two, nearly naked, young at a birth, the 

 mammae being either two or four in number. The skull pre- 

 sents a central ridge on the frontal bone, and its facial portion 

 is much elongated, the inter-orbital space being depressed and 

 wider, and the orbits also directed somewhat outward and less 

 straightforwardly than in several of the genera already noticed. 

 The maxillary bones are generally much reduced, and the in- 

 cisor teeth carried by them not unfrequently entirely aborted. 

 The teeth in this Sub-family vary in number from 32 to 36, 

 the dental formula being 1^2, C}, Pf, Mf. The foot is 

 slightly elongated by the lengthening of the naviculare bone of 

 the ankle, the others being short. In the wrist (carpus) the 

 central bone (centrale) may be present or absent ; its absence, 

 however, is a character which is met with otherwise only in 

 Man, the Chimpanzees, and the Endrina and some other 

 Lemurs, to be described later on. The csecum is not markedly 

 developed. 



