ANCESTRY OF SHREWS AND MOLES 
living in some remote corner of the world, as Madagascar, Cuba, or South 
Africa, where their more highly organized and intelligent enemies and rivals 
have not yet searched them out and hunted them into oblivion. 
This antiquity, and their pretension of primitive generalized 
characteristics, account for the otherwise puzzling resemblances 
shown by some of them to bats and lemurs (especially the 
aye-aye), and make it very difficult to place the order in a true 
relation to the other 
orders. Whether, in- 
deed, the insectivores 
have not descended 
from several primitive 
stocks, instead of only 
one, is still undecided. 
One of the most out- 
of-the-way forms is the 
colugo, or 
kaguan, an 
animal of the Oriental 
forests, which is about 
the size of a cat and 
has a very voluminous 
“patagium,” or exten- ay 
sion of furry skin, so jj Fimst’St> Tom 
that it looks and sails a 
through the air like 
a flying-squirrel; but the patagium more resembles that of 
a bat, while otherwise the creature is so lemurlike that it is 
often called in books the “flying-lemur.” It feeds on leaves, 
is nocturnal, rests during the day by clinging, head downward, 
to a shady trunk, sails from tree to tree by long leaps, and is 
familiar from Siam to Java, while a smaller species lives in the 
Philippines. Wallace*! and Horsfield®’ have written most about 
it; and its genus represents a suborder Dermopiera, while all 
69 
Colugo. 
THE SHORT-TAILED SHREW. 
