498 Dr. Forsyth Major— Extinct Primates of Madagascar. 



of their other characters, seemed a fortiori to apply to all the other 

 lemurs. 



The careful and detailed comparisons between Indrisinee and 

 Anthropoidea ^ show in fact a great amount of difference between 

 both in all the organs. But it would be an error to infer from this, 

 without closer examination, that the same holds good with regard 

 to all the Lemurids. In osteological characters, Lepidolemur and, to 

 a somewhat lesser extent, Chirogale, range with the Indrisinse ; but 

 the genera Lemur and Hapalolemiir, to limit myself to Malagasy 

 Lemuridee, tell quite another tale. Take, for instance, the humerus. 

 In most of the features of this bone, which have been pointed out as 

 characteristic of the monkeys in opposition to the Indrisinee, Lemur 

 and Hapalolemur range on the side of the former, and this applies 

 with greater force still to the humerus of Nesopithecus. The same 

 holds good, more or less, for most parts of the skeleton, but I have 

 purposely quoted the humerus as an example, because it is one of 

 the few bones known of the Tertiary Adapis. Filhol describes it 

 in Adapis as approaching closely to the 'MaJcis,' having in view, 

 I suppose, first of all the genus Lemur. At any rate the description 

 and the figures of the Adapis humerus agree very nearly with the 

 same bone of Lemur and Hapalolemur. 



Part of the Lemuridaj therefore come in their skeleton closer to 

 the monkeys than is generally believed,- and Nesopithecus goes a step 

 farther in the same direction. In the latter we may distinguish 

 four sets of characters. 



1. Primitive characters which Nesopithecus shares with Adapis and 

 with part at least of the Lemuridce generally ; e.g., cerebellum not 

 overlapped ; large bulla tympanica, tympanic ring free ; orbits not 

 closed behind by a bony septum ; entepicondylar foramen of the 

 humerus. These two last characters might with almost equal reason 

 find a place under 2. 



2. Characters which Nesopithecus has in common with the less 

 specialized lemurs and with monkeys as well, and which nevertheless 

 are comparatively primitive, for I submit that in a certain number 

 of characters the monkeys are less specialized than numbers of 

 lemurs ; e.g., more or less vertical insertions of lower incisors, many 

 features of the appendicular skeleton. 



3. Simian characters, absent in the Lemuridse, and which Neso- 

 pithecus shares exclusively with the monkeys, and some of them 

 more particularly with the Cercopithecid^ ; e.g., voluminous brain, 

 with the arrangement of the convolutions approaching those of 

 monkeys ; steep facial profile of the skull ; orbits directed straight 



1 " Histoire physique, naturelle, et politique de Madagascar," Mammiferes, i 

 (1876). 



2 "If, in accordance with the traditional views of zoologists, the Lemui-s are still 

 considered to be members of this order [i.e. Primates], they must form a sub-order 

 apart from all the others, with which they have really very little in common except 

 the opposable hallux of the hind foot, a character also met with in the Opossums, 

 and which is therefore of very secondary importance."— Flower & Lydekker : " An 

 Introduction to the Study of Mammals, living and extinct," 1891, p. 680. 



