42 



QCADRCMAXA. MAMMALIA. LEMURIDJ;. 



whatever may have been their peculiar claims to such 

 an honour, there is no doubt that in the sixteenth, 

 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries they were the 

 favourite companions of the most fashionable ladies of 

 Europe, and probably had even more tenderness 

 lavished upon them than is bestowed upon the 

 lap-dogs of the present day. We find the word 

 marmozet applied to young children as a term of 

 endearment by several writers of the last century. A 

 remarkable indication of the early prevalence of the 

 taste for having marmozets as pets, rendered the more 

 striking by the absurd anachronism involved in it, is 

 furnished by the fact that Guido has introduced one of 

 these animals into his picture of the Abduction of 

 Helen. 



Of this group, which includes only a single genus, 

 the species appear to be rather numerous, about thirty 

 having been already described, whilst, from the accounts 

 given by recent travellers, there can be little doubt that 

 many more remain to be discovered. As, however, 

 they are all very similar, both in structure and habits, 

 we shall only refer to a few of the best known species. 



THE COMMON MAEMOZET (Jacchus vulgaris), Plate 

 3, fig. 9, a native of Brazil, is of an ash colour, with 

 the rump barred with brown, and the tail variegated 

 with darker and lighter rings ; the head and back of 

 the neck are of a reddish-brown colour, and on the 

 sides of the head, both before and behind the ears, are 

 numerous long hairs of an ash colour. It measures 

 about eight inches in length, whilst its tail is nearly 

 eleven inches long. 



THE BLACK-TUFTED MARMOZET (J. penicillatus), 

 also a native of Brazil, closely resembles the preceding, 

 but has the head and the tufts of long hair about the 

 ears black ; the latter character also occurs in the 

 White-headed Marmozet (J. leucoeephalus), in which, 

 however, the whole front of the head is white, whilst 

 the general colour of the fur is reddish. 



THE MAEIKINA (J. Rosalia), Plate 3. fig. 10, belongs 

 to a section of the marmozets which has been regarded 

 by M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire as forming a distinct 

 genus (Midas), characterized by having the lower 

 incisor teeth short and broad, whilst in the rest of the 

 family they are long and narrow. It is a beautiful 

 little creature of a golden yellow colour, with the head 

 and shoulders covered with long hair, forming a sort of 

 mane, which has obtained it the name of the Lion 

 monkey from some authors. It occurs in several parts 

 of South America, especially in Guiana, Brazil, and 

 Peru, and, from the beauty of its silky fur, its gaiety, 

 and gentleness, it was formerly one of the greatest 

 favourites of all the marmozets. The species was first 

 described by Brisson, from a living specimen in the 

 possession of Madame de Pompadour. 



THE PINCHE (J. (Edipus), another pretty little 

 species inhabiting the same countries as the marikina, 

 has the long hairs confined to the forehead and the 

 crown of the head, where they form a sort of crest or 

 tuft of a white colour, the general colour of the fur 

 being a tawny brown, with the lower parts white, the 

 face black, the ears reddish, and the tail red at the 

 base and black at the tip. 



The marmozets close the great and interesting group 



of the Simise, which, as we have seen, includes those 

 species which approach most nearly to humanity in 

 their structure, and exceed all other animals in natural 

 intelligence, whilst the last members of the series cannot 

 be regarded as greatly superior, in either respect, to 

 creatures which the necessities of classification compel 

 us to place at a great distance below them. 



In the second group of the Quadrumana, that of the 

 ProsimicE or Lemurs, the general animal character of 

 the species is equally if not more strongly marked than 

 in the marmozets, and yet every species exhibits the 

 quadrumanous character in perfection, the thumbs of 

 all the four extremities being opposable. They are dis- 

 tinguished from the Simise, as already stated (p. 15), 

 by the presence of a claw upon the first finger of the 

 hinder hands, although the thumbs and the remainder 

 of the fingers on both pairs of hands are almost invari- 

 ably furnished with flat nails. The incisor teeth are 

 variable in number, being frequently unequal in the 

 two jaws ; the canines are always present, and usually 

 of considerable size, and the molars, of which there are 

 either five or six on each side, are often acutely tuber- 

 cular, indicating an insect diet. 



The whole of the Prosimiae are inhabitants of the Old 

 World, and the majority of them are confined to the 

 large island of Madagascar, where they are almost the 

 only representatives of their order. 



FAMILY IV. LEMURHLE. 



Of the species peculiar to the remarkable island of 

 Madagascar, by far the greater number belong to the 

 family of the Lemuridse or true Lemurs. In these the 

 general form of the body greatly resembles that of a 

 cat set rather high upon its legs ; the thumbs are all 

 opposable, and the first finger of the forehands well 

 developed ; the muzzle is elongated and pointed some- 

 thing like that of a fox, from which circumstance the 

 name of Fox-nosed monkeys has frequently been applied 

 to the lemurs. The eyes are large and placed on the 

 front of the head, the body is clothed with a thick soft 

 fur, and the tail is long and full. 



But the most positive distinctive character of the 

 family consists in the number of the teeth, of which 

 there are thirty-six, namely, four incisors, two canines, 

 and six molars in each jaw. The upper incisors 

 usually form two pairs, separated by a small space, and 

 placed almost perpendicularly in the jaw ; the lower 

 ones are much longer, and project almost in a horizontal 

 direction ; the upper canines are much longer than the 

 lower ones, and the salient tubercles of the molars 

 indicate frugivorous habits. 



These beautiful animals, of which numerous species, 

 varying in size from that of a marten to that of a large 

 cat or fox, occur in Madagascar, are nocturnal in their 

 habits, coming forth in troops from their hiding-places 

 at sundown to exhibit their wonderful activity amongst 

 the branches of the trees, through which they sweep 

 with a swiftness and silence that induced Linnaeus to 

 compare the species known to him to lemures or ghosts. 

 Their food, as already remarked, consists to a great 

 extent of fruits, but they also feed freely on insects 



