SLOW LEMUR. 85 



lively species the Ring-tailed Lemur or Macauco, 

 which exhibits the utmost vivacity in its manners 

 and motions. 



The late learned and accomplished Sir William 

 Jones has also given a pleasing general descrip- 

 tion of this animal in the 4th volume of Asiatic 

 Researches, and as it is always interesting to 

 observe the manners of an animal in its native 

 country, I shall here extract the account in the 

 President's own words. 



" The singular animal, which most of you saw 

 alive, and of which I now lay before you a per- 

 fectly accurate figure, has been very correctly de- 

 scribed by Linnaeus; except that sickled would 

 have been a juster epithet than awied for the bent 

 claws on its hinder indices ; and that the size of a 

 Squirrel seems an improper, because a variable, 

 measure: its configuration and colours are parti- 

 cularized with great accuracy by M. Daubenton; 

 but the short account of the Loris by M. de Buf- 

 fon appears unsatisfactory, and his engraved re- 

 presentation of it has little resemblance to na- 

 ture*; so little, that, when I was endeavouring to 

 find in his work a description of the Quadrumane, 

 which had just been sent me from Dacca, I passed 

 over the chapter on the Loris, and ascertained it 

 merely by seeing, in a note, the Linnamn charac- 



* Because in reality it represents the next species, or Loris, which 

 at that time was confounded, by Buffon and many other writers, 

 with the present animal j though differing much in proportion and 

 manners. 



