TKANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. OF ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 357 



Again, if we take the group of Lemur-like animals (Lemuroidea) as having 

 had their home and starting-point in or near their present head-quarters — Mada- 

 gascar — then some of the most aberrant forms are those which must have migrated 

 farthest. The character which is perhaps the most peculiar of any which the group 

 presents, is the elongation of two of the ankle-bones, as we find it in the Mada- 

 gascar genus Cheirogaleus. But this character is more exaggerated in migrants to 

 Africa — the Galagos — and most so of all in the more isolated emigrant, the Tarsier, 

 now found in Celebes and Borneo. 



The sub-family of slow-lemurs (Nycticebinee) would, on this view, seem to 

 have migrated in opposite directions, as we find the slender slow-lemur {Loris) in 

 Madras, Malabar, and Ceylon ; the typical slow-lemur (Nyctieebus) in South China, 

 Borneo and Java ; the Potto (Perodicticus) in Sierra Leone, and the Angwantibo 

 (Arctocebus) in Old Calabar. Of these, it is the African forms which have the 

 index-finger most atrophied— a tendency to its atrophy existing in the whole sub- 

 family. 



It would, of course, be very easy to multiply instances of the kind ; but it would 

 be also easy to cite a number of cases which appear to conflict with the view in ques- 

 tion. Thus familiar to us as it is, few animals are more peculiar in structure than 

 the common mole, which gives no present evidence of isolated origin ; and the most 

 aberrant of all bats, the Vampire (Desmodu$),ia rather widely distributed in South 

 America. Again,' with regard to the Lemur group, the most absolutely exceptional 

 is the Aye- Aye (Cheiromys), which, on the hypothesis supposed, has remained per- 

 sistently at the head-quarters of the group, i.e. in Madagascar. 



Even, however, if no exception existed to the co-existence now of singularity 

 of form and isolation and remoteness of situation, we could not safely draw any 

 decided conclusion from such facts, because fossil remains show us that forms 

 which have now a very limited distribution, were either widely spread in ear- 

 lier times, or existed in regions very remote from those they now inhabit. 

 Thus, in Eocene times there existed in Europe true opossums (now confined 

 to America), Tapirs, and a form like the African Potto before mentioned. In 

 Miocene times we had in Europe long-armed apes (creatures now found only in 

 Eastern Asia), with the now exclusively African Secretary Bird and Cape Ant- 

 Eater (Orycteropus). In the same period the Orang — or a nearly allied form — 

 seems to have ranged over India. What are more emphatically old-world forms 

 than the camel, horse and elephant, with the typical porcupine ? Yet all these 

 existed in America in Pliocene times. Did we know the Tapir in only one of the 

 two widely-separated stations in which it dwells to-day, we might well deem its 

 evolution to be due to migration and isolation. But we know from palaeontology 

 that it existed in Europe from the Eocene to the Pliocene period. 



Such facts as these do not, of course, disprove the doctrine that migration and 

 isolation are necessary antecedent conditions to specific genesis, but they show 

 how much caution must be used in drawing the conclusion that they are necessary, 

 from the distribution of animals much less likely to be found fossil than mammals are. 

 But an argument in favour of the views of Buffon and of Wagner may be 

 obtained from our own species, which exhibits some singular coincidences between 

 peculiarity of form and isolation. Among such instances may be mentioned the 

 Tasmanians, the Andaman Islanders, and the Ainos or Aborigines of Japan. One 

 of the most striking examples is that of the Eskimo — a people presenting many 

 peculiarities, some of which exaggerate the characters of the highest races of _ man- 

 kind. Thus, the pelvis differs from the European pelvis in an opposite direction to 

 that by which the Negro pelvis differs from the European, and the same is the case 

 with the proportions of the limbs, while the skulls of the Eskimo have the largest 

 and narrowest nasal aperture of all races, being in this respect the very opposite to 

 the Australians. The Eskimo have migrated eastwards, not reaching the south of 

 Greenland till the fourteenth century, and the race characters are most marked in 

 the most easterly tribes. These facts were brought forward by Professor Flower in 

 his Hunterian lectures for the present year, 1 when he said that the characters of 



1 The lecturer also said : ' The large size of the brain of all the hyperborean races, 

 Lapps as well as Eskimo, seems not necessarily to be connected with intellectual 



