34 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE. 



a remarkable little animal resembling, as Professor Owen says, 

 in size and shape the domestic cat, its head and ears being 

 larger, and its hind legs and tail longer than those of the 

 cat. Dr. Sandwich, writing of one he had in his possession, 

 says: — "The thick sticks I put into his cage were bored in 

 all directions by a large and destructive grub, called the 

 montouk. Just at sunset the aye-aye crept from under his 

 blanket, yawned, stretched and betook himself to his tree. 

 Presently he came to one of the worm-eaten branches, which 

 he began to examine most attentively, and bending forward 

 his ears, and applying his nose close to the bark, he rapidly 

 tapped the surface with the curious second digit, as a wood- 

 pecker taps a tree, though with much less noise, from time 

 to time inserting the end of the slender finger into the 

 worm-holes as a surgeon would a probe. At length he came 

 to a part of the branch which evidently gave out an inter- 

 esting sound, for he began to tear it with his strong teeth. 

 He rapidly stripped off the bark, cut into the wood, and 

 exposed the nest of a grub which he daintily picked out of 

 its bed, with the slender, tapping finger, and conveyed the 

 luscious morsel to his mouth. But I was yet to learn another 

 peculiarity. I gave him water to drink in a saucer, on which 

 he stretched out his hand, dipped a finger into it and drew 

 it obliquely through his open mouth. After a while he lapped 

 like a cat, but his first mode of drinking appeared to me to 

 be his way of reaching water in the deep clefts of trees." 

 ORDER II "^^^ animals which most nearly resemble the 

 Wing-Handed four-handed animals or quadrumana are the 

 Animals. wing-handed animals, — the bats or Cheiroptera. 

 These are of singular appearence and interesting habit. "If," 

 says the Rev. J. G. Wood, " the fingers of a man were to be 

 drawn out like wire to about four feet in length, a thin 

 membrane to extend from finger to finger, and another 

 membrane to fall from the little finger to the ankles, he 

 would make a very tolerable imitation of a bat." — Of course, 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



