34 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE AYE-AYE. 
astonishment, ‘‘ aye-aye !” on beholding the odd-looking quadruped, suggested the name 
which Sonnerat gave to it’. 
Buffon, after his close examination of the skin of the Aye-aye presented to the Royal 
Museum by Sonnerat, concludes that it is more closely allied to the genus of Squirrels 
than to any other, and that it also has some relation to the kind of Jerboa which he 
(Buffon) had called ‘‘ Tarsier ” in his 13th volume, 1769*. This animal is now recognized 
as a Lemurine quadrumane. After describing the hind feet, Buffon remarks that ‘‘ the 
opposable character of the thumb, with the flattened nail, separates the species widely 
from the genus of Squirrels ; and that, of all the animals that have the flattened thumb, 
the ‘Tarsier’ is that which most resembles the Aye-aye’.” Buffon’s acute discern- 
ment of resemblances is thus well exemplified; but as he believed the Tarsier to be a 
kind of Jerboa (it is the ‘‘ Woolly Jerboa” of Pennant), it is plain that he ranked the 
Aye-aye with the Rodents. : 
Gmelin, accordingly, entered the species as ‘‘ Sciurus madagascariensis” in the 13th 
edition of the ‘Systema Nature,’ 1790. 
Cuvier, placing it under the same name at the end of the Squirrels, in his ‘ Tableau 
Elémentaire de |’Histoire Naturelle’ (Svo, 1798, p. 136), remarks, in reference to the 
opposable thumb on the foot, that “it is, amongst the Rodents, what the Opossums 
are amongst the Carnassials ;” and he adds,—‘‘ Sonnerat alleges that it subsists on the 
worms which it extracts from the hollows of trees and fissures of the bark by means 
of its slender digit+.” Sonnerat, however, speaks only of the burrows or holes (‘‘ des 
trous des arbres ’’) whence the Aye-aye extracts its larval food. 
Schreber, in whose system the limb-characters preponderated, placed the Aye-aye 
in the genus Lemur, as L. psilodactylus ; and Dr. Shaw adopted the name and the 
implied affinities’. De Blainville gave it a like position in his ‘* Prodrome d’une 
Nouvelle Distribution Systématique du Régne Animal,” published in the ‘ Bulletin de 
la Société Philomathique’ (Paris, 1816), where the Aye-aye is placed amongst the 
‘« Pithécoides,” or the group that follows the ‘‘ Singes”’®. 
In the meanwhile, however, Cuvier had availed himself of the means at his command 
‘ Op. cit. p. 124. . Not the cry of the animal, as some writers have supposed. 
* «T] m’a paru se rapprocher du genre des Ecureuils plus que d’aucun autre; il a aussi quelque rapport a 
Yespéce de Gerboise que j’ai donnée sous le nom de Tarsier, vol. xiii.”’ (Hist. Nat. Supplément, vol. vii. p. 269). 
3 «Ce caractére de doigt I’¢loigne beaucoup du genre de |’Ecureuil. De tous les animaux qui ont le pouce 
aplati, le Tarsier est celui qui se rapproche le plus de l’Aye-aye”’ (ib. p. 270). 
* «© Qu’il est parmi les Rongeurs ce que les pédimanes sont parmi les Carnassiers.”” ‘‘ Sonnerat prétend qu’il vit 
des vers qu’il tire des creux des arbres et des fentes des écorces, au moyen de son doigt plus gréle”’ (op. cit. p. 136). 
° « Long-fingered Lemur” (General Zoology, vol. i. part 1. p. 109, pl. 34, 1800). 
* « Pithécoides, les Makis, les Loris, l’Aye-aye,” p.117. In a later work on the Aye-aye, published in 
1841, as part of his ‘Ostéographie,’ M. de Blainville alludes to a memoir on the animal read by him to the 
Société Philomathique in May 1816; but the ‘Bulletin’ for that year contains merely the reference above 
cited, and in a note the author states that want of space prevents his adding the explanatory remarks which his 
table of Mammifers needed. 
