104. REPORT—1862. 
is the longest and largest) is thrust forward into the food, the slender third 
is raised upwards and backwards above the rest, while the first finger or thumb is 
lowered, so as to be seen below and behind the chin; in this position the hand is 
drawn backwards and forwards rapidly, the inner side of the fourth finger passing 
between the lips, the head of the animal being held sideways, thus depositing the 
food in the mouth at each moyement; the tongue, jaws, and lips are kept in full 
motion all the time. Sometimes the animal will advance tata and lap from the 
dish like a cat, but this is unusual. I have never heard her utter any cry, or pro- 
duce any vocal sound, during the many hours at night in which I have watched 
her habits, nor has she appeared shy or angry at my presence. 
With reference to food, this creature exhibits no inclination to take any kind of 
insects, but feeds freely on a mixture of milk, honey, eggs, and any thick, sweet, 
glutinous fraud, rejecting meal-worms, grasshoppers, the larve of wasps, and all 
similar objects. Consequently I am inclined to think that this animal is not 
insectivorous. Its large and powerful teeth lead me to infer that it may possibly 
wound trees, and cause them to discharge their juices into the cavity made by its 
teeth, and that upon this fluid it probably feeds. This appears to me the more 
likely, as I observe that our specimen returns frequently to the same spot on the 
tree which she had previously injured. I am also strengthened in my opinion by 
noticing the little attention paid by the animal to its food. It does not watch or 
look after it; for I have on several occasions removed the vessel containing its food 
during the time the animal was feeding, and the creature continued to thrust its 
hand forward, as before, upon the same spot—though after a while, finding no 
more food, she discontinued, and moved off to search for more elsewhere. This 
apparently stupid act is so unlike the habits of an animal intended to capture or 
feed on living creatures that I am inclined to believe that the Aye-aye feeds upon 
inanimate substances. I have frequently seen it eat a portion of the bark and wood 
after taking a quantity of the fluid food. 
The excrement of this animal much resembles the dung of small rabbits, being 
in separate nearly round balls. 
On Marriages of Consanguinity. By Gitzert W. Cutty, M.D. Oxon. 
Two opposite views of the effect of the above marriages have been held— 
(1.) That they are unnatural, and entail degeneracy upon their offspring as 2 
natural consequence, and independently of the ordinary laws of inheritance. 
(2.) That they are not contrary to any law of nature; and that when ill conse- 
quences are observed to follow them, they do so by ordinary inheritance only. 
Two kinds of evidence have been employed in investigating this subject— 
(1.) That derived from observation and statistics in the case of human beings, and 
(2.) From carefully recorded experiments in the case of animals. 
The former tends somewhat to support the first opinion, and the latter the second. 
Upon criticism of the evidence of the former kind, it appears that the results of 
various observers are inconsistent with one another, and that in one instance a 
similar investigation has shown worse results to be produced from the intermarriage 
of natives of different European countries than those alleged to have followed from 
the marriages of blood-relations. Further, the impossibility of obtaiming correct 
family histories is sufficient to invalidate all evidence of the kind in such cases as 
the present. On the other hand, the evidence from the breeding of animals is clear 
and conclusive up to the point that animals are known to have been bred with a 
degree of closeness physically impossible in the human race, without any apparent 
ps age This evidence is open to one serious objection, viz. that the animals 
so bred are subject to careful selection, which is impossible in the case of mankind. 
This is an objection, in fact, not against consanguineous marriages altogether, but 
against such marriages between unhealthy persons, and proceeds on the hypothesis 
that the ordinary laws of inheritance affect close-bred animals equally with others. 
It is therefore consistent with the second opinion, and inconsistent with the first. 
The remainder of the paper was occupied by the relation of several observations 
ye mankind made in the Mediterranean, the Scottish islands, in Cornwall, and 
elsewhere by Dr. Davy, and kindly communicated by him to the writer, all of which 
tend to show that many instances are to be found in which inhabitants of isolated 
