158 PROGRESS IN ZOOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE xn 



placed within the limits of any of the previously constituted 

 orders, it has been considered advisable by some naturalists to 

 increase the ordinal divisions in their behalf and to allow 

 them to take rank as a distinct group, related to the Primates 

 on the one hand, and to the Carnivora and Insectivora on the 

 other. The knowledge of their relations, however, bids fair to 

 be greatly increased by the discoveries of fossil forms lately 

 made both in France and America, some of which seem to 

 carry their affinities even to the Ungulata. 



Existing upon the earth at present, besides the more 

 ordinary lemurs to which the species known to Linnaeus 

 belong, there are two aberrant forms, each represented by a 

 single species. These are the little Tarsius of Borneo and 

 Celebes, and the singular CMromys, or Aye-aye, which, though 

 an inhabitant of the headquarters of the group, Madagascar, 

 and living in the same forests and under the same conditions 

 as the most typical lemurs, exhibits a most remarkable degree 

 of specialisation in the structure both of limbs and teeth, the 

 latter being modified so as to resemble, at least superficially, 

 those of the Eodents, a group with which in fact it was once 

 placed. It was discovered by Sonnerat in Madagascar in 

 1780, two years after the death of Linnaeus. The specimen 

 brought to Paris by this traveller was the only one known 

 until 1860. Since that date, however, its native land has 

 been more freely open than before to explorers, and many 

 specimens have been obtained, one having lived for several 

 years in the Gardens of the London Zoological Society. 



The history of a name is often not a little curious. Linnaeus 

 applied the term Lemures, i.e. the departed spirits of men, to 

 these animals on account of their nocturnal habits and ghost- 

 like aspect. The hypothetical continent in the Indian Ocean, 

 supposed to have connected Madagascar with the Malayan 

 Archipelago is called by Mr. Sclater, Lemuria, as the presumed 

 original home of the lemur -like animals. Although the 

 steps are not numerous, it might puzzle a classical scholar, 

 ignorant of Zoology, to explain the connection between this 

 continent and the Eoman festival of the same name. 



The fifth animal which Linnaeus places in his genus Lemur, 

 under the name of L. volans, is the very singular creature to 



