188 RODENTS OF MADAGASCAR. [CH. IV 



thecinse ; the remaining Lemurs consist also of three 

 subfamilies, which howevej* include but few genera and 

 species, and are distributed in Africa and in the Oriental 

 region. Doubtless, as Mr Lydekker has pointed out in 

 the "Royal Natural History," the excessive allowance of 

 Lemurs is partly to be attributed to the entire absence of 

 large and powerful carnivorous animals. Carnivora are 

 not at all abundant. But they include two highly 

 peculiar forms. Firstly, Cryptoprocta, a Viverrine believed 

 by some to have relations with the extinct Creodonta but 

 which is at any rate to be referred to a separate subfamily 

 of the Ailuroidea, and Eupleres, which is also an isolated 

 form and has some affinities to the Insectivora. This 

 latter group includes five genera of a peculiar family, the 

 Centetidae, found nowhere else in the world except, in 

 certain islands of the West Indies 1 ; the Rodents, an 

 universally distributed family of mammals, all belong to 

 the Myomorpha (the rat tribe) ; but they are all peculiar 

 genera of that group, viz. Nesomys, Hallomys, Hypogeomys 

 and Brachytarsomys. The ungulates are exceedingly 

 poorly represented; there is only a Potamochcerus (P. 

 edwardsi), and quite recently a Hippopotamus has been 

 dug up from marshes where its bones were commingled 

 with those of other living and recently extinct forms. Mr 

 Blanford 2 reckons that out of the twenty-four genera of 

 mammals of Madagascar only two, Potamochcerus and the 

 shrew Crocidura, exist in Africa. 



1 Mr Dobson however {Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. Sept. 1884) denies 

 that the W. Indian Solenodon is a member of this family. 



2 Presidential address to Geol. Soc. 1890. 



