A REMARKABLE MAMMAL 
My readers are not to imagine that the animal whose 
portrait appears asa frontispiece to this work is one new 
to science, or even one whose structure has hitherto been 
imperfectly known. On the contrary, it has been known 
to science for nearly a century and a quarter; but it is 
altogether such a peculiar and interesting creature that it 
may well form the text of an article. 
Like so many of its cousins the lemurs, the aye-aye 
is an inhabitant of Madagascar, from the west coast of 
which island the first specimen known to European 
science was brought to Paris in 1780 by the French 
traveller Sonnerat, who discovered several other curious 
mammals and birds. By the naturalists of that time, 
despite the remarkable peculiarity in the structure of 
the forepaws mentioned later on in this article, it was 
regarded as a squirrel, and accordingly named Sciurus 
madagascariensis. It was, however, soon after apparent 
that, whatever might be its real affinities, it could 
not rightly be retained in the same genus as the true 
squirrels; and it was accordingly renamed, at first 
Daubentonia, and subsequently Chiromys (Chetromys). 
The justification for the proposal of this second title was 
that the first had been previously employed in botany, 
which was then (although not now) regarded as a bar 
to its use in zoology. And at the present day some 
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