18 ALLEN’S NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
drawing them through its mouth. The Aye-Aye is fearless of 
Man, but in its wakeful hours, during the night, when irritated 
it can be very savage and strike out with its hands. The female 
produces but one young at a birth, and builds, in the fork of a 
tree, a ball-like nest, two feet in diameter, with an entrance hole 
in the side, forming it of the rolled up leaves of the Travellers’ 
tree, and lining it with small twigs and dry leaves. (Lavon.) 
THE TARSIERS. FAMILY TARSITDA:, 
This family, like the preceding, has been constituted for 
the reception of two animals which are so remarkably dis- 
tinct from all the other species of Lemurs, as to necessi= 
tate their being thus segregated. Between these two forms 
however, so close a relationship exists, that they have often 
been considered as only varieties of the same species. The 
family, therefore, consists, as in the Chiromyide, of a single 
genus, the characters of which constitute also those of the 
family. 
THE TARSIERS.: GENUS TARSIUS, 
Tarsius, Storr. Prod. Method. Mamm., p. 32 (1780). 
The Tarsiers are distinguished externally by the possession 
of a rounded head, and a very short, pointed muzzle ; by their 
very large, long and naked ears, and eyes so remarkably large 
and protruding, as to form the most prominent feature of the 
face. The hind-limb, which is much longer than the fore- 
limb, is also very remarkable on account of the great elonga- 
tion of the ankle-region (or tarsus) of the limb. ‘The long and 
slender toes terminate in round, sucker-like discs, and are 
furnished with flat nails, except on the second and third toes, 
where the nails are merely compressed claws. ‘The fore- 
