COBEGOS. 216 
J 
tenacity of life that it is exceedingly difficult to kill it by any ordinary means. 
The tail is prehensile, and is probably made use of as an additional support while 
feeding. The animal is said to have only a single young one at a time; and my 
own observation confirms this statement, for I once shot a female, with a very 
small, blind, and naked little creature clinging closely to its breast, which was 
quite bare and much wrinkled, reminding me of the young of the Marsupials, to 
which it seemed to form a transition. On the back, and extending over the limbs 
and membrane, the fur of these animals is short but exquisitely soft, resembling in 
its texture that of the chinchilla.” 
A very similar account is given of this species in Java by a much earlier 
writer, Horsfield, who states that, in addition to leaves, it feeds on the fruits of 
several trees when in an unripe condition, among these being young cocoanuts. 
In Java it is said to be “confined to particular districts, where it is met with 
chiefly on isolated hills, covered with a fertile soil, and abounding with young 
luxuriant trees, the branches of which afford it a safe concealment during the 
day. As the evening approaches, it leaves its retreat, and is seen in considerable 
numbers making oblique leaps from one tree to another; it also discovers itself by 
a croaking, harsh, disagreeable noise.” 
Philippine Of the slightly smaller Philippine cobego (G. philippinensis), 
Cobego. restricted to the islands from which it takes its name, we have a 
short account by Professor Moseley in his Naturalist on the Challenger. This 
observer relates how, when on Basilan Island—one of the Philippines—he was 
conducted by a native guide to a particular spot, for the purpose of shooting 
specimens of this animal. Here “some few trees were standing isolated, not 
having been as yet felled on the clearing. On one of these, after much search, a 
kaguan was seen hanging to the shady side of a tall trunk. It was an object very 
easily seen, much more so than I expected. It moved up the tree with a shambling, 
jerky gait, hitching itself up apparently by a series of short springs. It did not 
seem disposed to take a flying leap, so I shot it. It was a female with a young 
one clinging to the breast. It was in a tree at least forty yards distant from any 
other, and must have flown that length to reach it. I understood from my guide 
that numbers of these animals were caught when trees were cut down in clearing. 
They are especially abundant at the Island of Bojol, north of Mindanao; their 
skins were sold at Zebu, which lies near, at five dollars a dozen.” 
In their leaf-eating habits the cobegos stand apart from all other Insectivores, 
in this respect occupying the same relationship to the typical members of the order 
as is presented by the fruit-bats to the typical bats. Instead of possessing the power 
of true flight, characteristic of the bats, the cobego merely enjoys spurious flight, or the 
power of continuing the extension of an ordinary leap by the aid of its parachute. 
It would require but comparatively little further modification to alter a 
cobego into a creature much resembling a bat, and endowed with the power of 
true flight; and we thus gain a good idea of the way in which the bats may have 
probably been derived from the Insectivores. It must not, however, be thereby 
supposed that the cobego is in any sense the missing link between these orders; 
its leaf-eating habits, as well as the peculiar structure of its incisor teeth, being 
alone amply sufficient to disprove its claim to that position;—the insect-eating 
