496 Dr. Forsyth Major — Extinct Primates of Madagascar. 



A beautifully preserved skull in the British Museum, from a cave 

 near Fort Dauphin (south-east coast), briefly described by me 

 under the name of Nesopitheciis australis,^ showed first of all that 

 Globilemur is a member of this group and probably not generically 

 distinct from JVesopitheciis,- and that Nesopitheciis shared with the 

 lemurs, especially those of Madagascar, a certain number of cranial 

 characters. It also shows that I was mistaken in supposing that 

 Nesopitheciis Boberti had the orbits separated from the temporal 

 foss^ by a bony wall ; and although the absence of the latter 

 is not, strictly speaking, a character which can find a place in 

 the diagnosis of lemurs, as distinguished from the monkeys, it 

 certainly is a more primitive feature than the presence of a bony 

 septum. And so are the lemurine features of the Nesopithecus 

 skull, viz., the conformation of the basis cranii, especially of the 

 bulla tympanica, the character of the malar bone reaching the 

 lachrymal, etc. 



One lemurine feature of Nesopitheciis, the position of the lower 

 caniniform tooth, which does not bite in front of the upper, may be 

 considered to be a transition between the condition exhibited by the 

 New World monkeys on the one side and the Old World monkeys 

 on the other. This on the following grounds. 



The commonly received view that the lower caniniform tooth of 

 recent Lemuridee is not a ' canine ' but a premolar, because it is not 

 placed in front but behind the upper canine, dates from Geofi"roy 

 Saint-Hilaire. Objections have been raised from time to time,, 

 e.g. by Moseley and Kay Lankester,^ and about the same time by 

 Donitz.* The latter pointed out that the tooth in question is not 

 situated in the diastema between the upper canine and the upper 

 anterior premolar, but acts with its cusp against the inner side of 

 the upper canine. Similar remarks have been of late made by 

 Von Lorenz.° A. Grandidier, on his side, believes that the presence 

 in young Indrisinse of a canine de lait, which is not replaced, settles 

 the question once for all in favour of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's view.® 

 However, this tooth of Indrisiuje being the evident homologue of 

 the outer of the three incisiform teeth of other Lemuridas, or rather 

 of its deciduous predecessor, it proves nothing more or less than 

 does this supposed ' lower canine ' of other members of the family. 



^ Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1899, p. 988. Protoindris gJohiceps, Lorenz 

 (Denkschr. Akad. Wiss. Wien., Ixx, 1900, p. 11, pi. iii, %. 2), is based on 

 a photograph from Mr. Sikora representing the reduced side view of the type of 

 Nesopitheacs australis. 



^ It is possible that my Globilemur Flacoiirti from the neighbourhood of Nossi-Ve 

 on the south-west coast may prove to be specifically identical with Bradylemur 

 Bastardi, G. Grand. (Bull. Mus. d'hist. nat. Paris, 1900, No. 6, p. 215), from 

 Ambolisatra. 



' Journ. Anat. & Physiol., iii, 1868, pp. 73-80 (1869). 



* " Uber die Eckzahne der Lemurideu " : Sitzungsber. Ges. Naturf. Freunde,. 

 Berlin, loth December, 1868, p. 32. 



* Op. cit., p. 7. 



^ " Histoire physique, uaturelle, et iwliticiue de Madagascar," Mammiferes, i, 

 p. 32, footnote 3 (1876). 



