GALEOPITHECID.£ 615 
further connected by a similar expansion passing outwards along 
the back of the feet to the base of the claws, and, inwardly, involy- 
ing the long tail to the tip, forming a true interfemoral membrane, 
as in the Bats. 
The two species of Flying Lemurs, as the representatives of this 
genus are commonly but erroneously called, live in the forests of the 
Fic, 282.—Feet of Galeopithecus philippinensis. 
Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands, where 
they feed chiefly on the leaves and fruits of trees. Their habits are 
nocturnal, and during the daytime they cling to the trunks or limbs 
of trees, head downwards, in a state of repose. With the approach 
of night their season of activity commences, when they may be 
seen gliding from tree to tree supported on their cutaneous 
parachute, and they have been observed to traverse in this way a 
space of 70 yards with a descent of only about one in five. 
Galcopithecus was referred by some of the older zoologists and 
anatomists to the Bats, and by others to the Lemurs, but Professor 
Peters’s view, that it belongs to neither of these orders, and should 
be considered an aberrant Insectivore, has been very generally 
accepted, although, as mentioned above, the association is by no 
means a close one. Besides differing from the Bats in the form of 
the anterior limbs and of the double-rooted outer incisor and canine, 
it also contrasts strongly with them in the presence of a large sac- 
culated cecum, and in the great length of the colon, which is so 
remarkably short in all the Chiroptera. From the Lemurs, on the 
other hand, the form of the brain, the characters of the teeth, the 
structure of the skull, and the deciduate discoidal placenta com- 
pletely separate it. In a recent elaborate memoir on the myology 
and affinities of Galeopithecus Dr. Leche! considers that we have in 
this genus an indication of the mode in which the Insectivora were 
modified into the Chiroptera, although it is completely off the direct 
1 Ueber die Stiugethiergattung Galeopitheeus. Sv. Ak. Handi, vol. xxi. pt. xi. 
(1886). 
