THE FLYING-SQUIRRELS OF ASIA AND 



AFRICA 



Despite the repetition of the statement as to their essential 

 structural difference in almost every work on popular natural 

 history issued to the public, few persons, save those who 

 have made anatomy a special study, can be induced to 

 believe that swallows and swifts are not closely allied 

 birds. And it may be presumed that an equal degree of 

 incredulity will prevail in the minds of most people when 

 they are told that the two animals whose portraits are 

 given in the plates accompanying have no sort of intimate 

 relationship, being in fact much more widely sundered from 

 one another than are such apparently dissimilar creatures 

 as a squirrel and a beaver. An instance of this incredulity 

 has indeed been actually published with regard to the 

 figured species of the so-called African flying-squirrels, or, 

 as they might be better termed, scale-tailed squirrels. Now 

 this particular species of the group was sent home from 

 Central Africa by Emin Pasha in the 'eighties, and described 

 and figured under the name of Anomalurus pusillus by Mr. 

 Thomas, of the British Museum, in 1887 and 1888. Three 

 years later the figure (the one here reproduced) appeared 

 in Major Casati's " Ten Years in Equatoria," with the 

 following remarks : — 



" The flying squirrel {Mbomd) lives in the forests, almost 

 always upon the branches of the trees, whence it throws 



235 



