THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 133 



The first living aye-aye to reach Europe was presented in 

 1862 by Mr. Edward Mellish of the Mauritius. In 1859 Dr. 

 Sand with sent a spirit specimen to Owen, which formed the 

 material for his memoir in the Transactions. Sonnerat dis- 

 covered the species in 1780, and brought a specimen to 

 Paris, probably the only one known in Europe till the subject 

 examined by Owen. The animal is about the size of a cat, 

 clothed in long dark-brown fur, with a woolly coat, and is 

 confined to the forests of Madagascar. "I am told," wrote 

 Sandwith to Owen, " that the Aye- Aye is an object of venera- 

 tion at Madagascar, and that if any native touches one he is 

 sure to die within the year; honce the difficulty of obtaining a 

 specimen. I overcame the difliculty by a reward of ten pounds.'* 



Great interest centres in this species from the fact that it 

 was formerly classed with the Rodents till Owen settled its 

 true position as an aberrant lemur. As a menagerie animal 

 the aye-aye is not attractive, its nocturnal habits causing it 

 to spend the day in its sleeping-box. 



Prior to this one had been kept in confinement in Reunion, 

 as appears from a paragraph in the Journal dw Commerce 

 translated in the Literary Gazette of December 16, 1854: 



The Zoological Gardens have received a specimen — the only one known 

 to exist — of the monkey-rats described by De Blainville. It is called the 

 aye-aye^ and comes from the unexplored forests of Madagascar. From its 

 appearance, its bushy tail, and its teeth, it would be taken for a squirrel. 

 But it is of the size of a large hare ; its colour is entirely black, and on its 

 back is long and thick hair like bristles. Its tail, extremely long, has 

 hair at the end which spreads out bilaterally and horizontally. This tail 

 serves as a sort of parasol to shelter its head, when it lies rolled up in a 

 corner. ... It is said that the animal digs itself a hole ; but it escaped 

 one day, and was found perched in a tree. It is fed on a certain descrip- 

 tion of larvae. 



The reference to the food in the last sentence is interesting, 

 since Bartlett recorded the fact that the aye-aye in the Gardens 

 exhibited no inclination to take any kind of insects, but fed 

 freely on a mixture of milk, honey, eggs, and any thick, sweet, 

 glutinous fluid, rejecting meal-worms, grasshoppers, the larvae 

 of wasps, and all similar objects. Consequently he was inclined 

 to think that the animal was not insectivorous."^ 



* Proceedings, 1862, p. 222. 



