4 ALLEN’S NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
on their hind legs by a series of bounds, holding their hands 
over their head in a ludicrous fashion. Most of them are 
nocturnal, or crepuscular, sleeping the greater part of the day 
in holes or on a branch of a tree coiled up in a ball. Their 
food consists chiefly of leaves, fruits, honey, birds’ eggs, and 
birds, or any small animals they can pounce upon. 
The Lemurs now living are divided into three families. 
The Aye-Aye and the Tarsiers, on account of their very special 
characters, constitute each a distinct family—named Ci70- 
myiae and Tarstide respectively—while the True Lemurs form 
the third, the ZLemurvide, to which all the remaining forms 
belong. 
THE AYE-AYES. FAMILY CHIROMYIDA:. 
This very aberrant family contains only one species; the 
characters of the family and of the genus C/zromys are, there- 
fore, necessarily those of the single species known. 
THE AYE-AYE. CHIROMYS MADAGASCARIENSIS. 
Sciurus madagascariensis, Gmel., S. N., i., p. 152 (1788). 
Daubentonia madagascariensis, Geoffr., Décad. Philos., iv., p. 
193 (1795); Dahlbom, Studia, p. 326, t «2: 
Chiromys madagascariensis, Cuv., Lecons d’Anat. Comp., Tabl. 
de Class.,. 1. (1800); Owen, Tr. ZS... vol. v4 Pas. 
Peters, Abhandl. K. Akad. Berlin, 1865, p. 79. 
(Plate 1.) 
Characters.—Head short and round ; face short-snouted, with 
a patch of bristles below the eye, between the ear and the angle 
of the mouth; eyes round, prominent; eyebrows long and 
bristly ; pupils wide, furnished with a false eyelid (a nicti- 
tating membrane); ears large, rounded, directed backwards, 
