BATS—FOUSSA 191 



absent from Africa. These bats also occur in the Seychelles, and extend from 

 India through the Malay countries to Australia. The three species of fruit-bats 

 constituting the genus Eidolon are restricted to the island. They are related 

 to African types. The most remarkable of all the Malagasy Chiroptera is the 

 exceedingly rare golden or sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita), which has 

 been regarded as representing a family by itself, and may perhaps be allied 

 to a still rarer New Zealand species known as Mystacops tuber culattis. This 

 bat was described in 1878, on the evidence of a single specimen, and it was not 

 till 1899 that the British Museum acquired its solitary example of the species. 

 Apparently the Malagasy bat is nearly allied to the South American Mormops, 



THE FOUSSA. 



and if, as suggested, it be also related to the New Zealand Mystacops, we 

 shall have further evidence in favour of a former land connection between 

 Madagascar (by way, perhaps, of Ceylon), Polynesia, and South America. The 

 occurrence of the same generic type of tortoises, Podocnemis, in Madagascar and 

 South America, may perhaps be explained by independent southern migration 

 from the Northern Hemisphere, where kindred types occur in the fossil state ; but 

 it is very doubtful if such an explanation will serve in the case of the bats any 

 more than it will in the occurrence of allied types of shallow-water molluscs on 

 both the New Zealand and the Patagonian coasts. 



The Garnivora are but very feebly represented in the island, the 



largest species being the animal commonly known as the foussa 



(Cryptoprocta ferox), which although classed with the civets in the family Viverridce, 



