16 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



the "smile" of a favourite horse or dog, but after a 

 considerable experience of animals I can safely say that 

 none can smile like the Tarsier. 



In proportion to the body the hind-legs are very 

 long, and consequently the Tarsier is able to make 

 prodigious leaps. But perhaps the most remarkable 

 features in its anatomy are the hands and feet ; these 

 are naked except for a little down on the back of the 

 metacarpals and metatarsals ; both fingers and toes 

 are extremely long and slender, terminating in large 

 flattened discs like the suctorial discs of a tree-frog. 

 The animal exhibits another froglike feature in the 

 great length of the ankle-joint. As in the Amphibia, 

 the astragalus and calcaneum (the two ankle-bones 

 which articulate with the shin-bones) are slender and 

 produced. By means of its sucking discs the Tarsier 

 can cling quite well to vertical surfaces, if they are 

 not too smooth. The nails of all the fingers and of 

 all the toes, except the second and third, are very 

 small, somewhat triangular in shape, and embedded in 

 the fleshy discs, but on the second and third toes the 

 nails are erect claws. The big toe is opposable, but 

 the thumb is not. If the under surfaces of the finger- 

 and toe-discs are examined with a lens, it will be seen 

 that they are traversed by fine longitudinal and parallel 

 lines ; similar lines, curiously enough, are present on 

 the upper surface of the discs, but here they are con- 

 centrically arranged. The skin covering the palmar 

 surface of the fingers and toes is broken up by deep 

 creases into numerous little blocks, more or less cubical 

 in shape, and each of these blocks has its own system 

 of fine lines, oblique, longitudinal, or transverse. This 

 arrangement is, I think, an adaptation enabling the 



