KAVIRONDO POTTO 
111 
KAVIRONDO POTTO 
By C. W. Hobley. 
In Mr. R. Kemp’s interesting paper on collecting on Mount 
Elgon, he mentions the discovery of a lemuroid beast quite new 
to East Africa, representatives of this genus being up to now 
only found in West Africa. 
Now for some years past I have been collecting native and 
other stories of a queer beast which inhabited the Nandi forest. 
One European saw a specimen on the Uasingishu plateau and 
declared it was a bear ; stories reached me also from Nandi of 
an animal which attacked women when they went into the 
forest to collect firewood, and it appeared that there must be 
some foundation for all these yarns. 
Since the discovery of the curious animal referred to I 
believe that we have solved the question of the mysterious 
beast of the Nandi Forest. 
I have not seen the specimen, but Mr. Brett tells me that 
it was brought in to him from the Kakumega Forest by a native 
of that region, who stated that the specimen was a young one 
and that if the mother had been about they would not have 
succeeded in catching it, for the adults are very fierce and throw 
stones with considerable accuracy at anyone who comes near. 
In life the head of the beast is said at a little distance to appear 
extraordinarily like that of a bear. Mr. Brett’s specimen was 
in length approximately two feet without the tail, and brown 
in colour; its scientific name is Perodicticus ibeanus. Efforts 
should be made to obtain a series of adult specimen skulls 
and skins for the Society’s Museum. It is said to be very 
slow in its habits, so that once found there should be no difficulty 
in shooting it. 
The lemurs are allied to the monkeys but are somewhat 
lower in the scale, they are generally of nocturnal habits and feed 
on insects and also fruit and the eggs of birds. There are 
two species of small lemur found from the coast up to about 
Kibwezi and called by the Swahilis Mkomba, they belong to the 
Galago group of the lemur family. 
