110 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



vote their waking hours during the wet season, when 

 the warm rains make everything grow in tlie greatest 

 profusion, to the cultivatiou of their long tails. It is 

 true, their bodies grow sleek and fat, but their tails in- 

 crease in size out of all proportion. During the time, 

 however, of their summer sleep their beautiful tails 

 grow more and more slender, until when they again 

 awaken their appearance is so changed that they would 

 scarcely be known for the same animals. They are, 

 however, principally known as the best nest-builders 

 among the mammals ; and their nests, like those of 

 birds, are not used alone as sleeping places, but homes 

 for their young until the little ones are old enough to 

 look out for themselves. 



They, like most lemurs, are night animals, and 

 their eyes shine in the dark like illuminated jewels. 



POTTO. 



HOW HE WAS BROUGHT TO ENGLAND. 



A gentleman named Bartlett, while on a voyage 

 to the African const, obtained a strange animal which 

 he called " Yan Bosman's potto," because nearly two 

 hundred years ago a ship captain named Van Bos- 

 man, who visited the Guinea shore, saw one of the 

 queer little creatures, called it a potto, and wrote 

 an account of it after reaching his home in Holland. 



When Mr. Bartlett first took the potto aboard his 

 ship it was so young that he feared it would not live. 



