682 PRIMATES 
Suborder LEMUROIDEA. 
The Latin term Lemur was applied by Linnzus to the typical 
representatives of the present group of Primates, having been sug- 
gested by the nocturnal habits and strange ghost-like appearance 
of some of its members. As these animals had previously no 
vernacular appellation in English, this name has been generally 
adopted, and is now completely anglicised, making “Lemurs” in 
the plural. The French call them Makis, and the Germans Halbaffen, 
in allusion to their forming a transition from monkeys to ordinary 
quadrupeds. For the same reason they are called Prosimie by 
some systematic writers. When the name was bestowed by 
Linneus only five species were known, of which one, L. volans, 
Linn. (Galeopithecus volans of modern writers), is now removed by 
common consent from the group. Notwithstanding the discovery 
of many new and curious forms, the Lemurs remain a very natural 
and circumscribed division of the animal kingdom, though no longer 
considered a single genus, but divided up into many genera and 
even families. 
The existing species are not numerous, and do not diverge 
widely in their organisation or habits, being all of small or moderate 
size, all adapted to an arboreal life, climbing with ease, and, as they 
find their living, which consists of fruits, leaves, birds’ eggs, small 
birds, reptiles, and insects, among the branches of the trees, they 
rarely have occasion to descend to the ground. None are aquatic, 
and none burrow in the earth. Many of the species, although by no 
means all, are nocturnal in their habits, spending the day in sleep- 
ing in holes, or rolled up in a ball, perched on a horizontal branch, 
or in the fork of a tree, and seeking their food by night. Their 
geographical distribution is very peculiar; by far the larger pro- 
portion of species, including all those to which the term “ Lemur ” 
is now especially restricted, being exclusively inhabitants of Mada- 
gascar, where they are so abundant and widely distributed that it 
is said by M. Grandidier, who has contributed more than any other 
traveller to enrich our knowledge of the structure and manners of 
these animals, that there is not a little wood in the whole island 
in which some of them cannot be found. From Madagascar as a 
centre a few species less typical in character extend through the 
African continent westward as far as Senegambia, and others are 
found in the Oriental region as far east as the Philippine Islands 
and Celebes. 
The following are the essential characters by which the sub- 
order as a whole is distinguished from the Anthropoidea. Skull 
with the orbit opening freely into the temporal fossa beneath the 
postorbital bar (except in Tarsius); and the lachrymal foramen 
