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NATURAL HIS TORI. 
Maids a bourn , or the Woolly Maids. Oil the north-east coast, the natives call this Indris the 
Amponghi, and this name is given to it in the great forest of Tsasifoutt, which is in the island of 
St. Mary, adjacent to Madagascar. This is an interesting point, for it affords evidence that the 
island of Madagascar had once a greater geographical extension, and that St. Mary’s and the other 
•small islands along the coast were at a former period continuous with it. These woolly Indris are 
.not frequently caught, or indeed seen at all, for they hide during the daytime, and sleep curled up 
•amongst the thick shade of the foliage, or in some comfortable nest in the hollow of a tree. At 
night-time they wake up, and eat and play amongst the trees on which their food grows. They are 
•said to be stupid animals, but probably, as they have never had their intelligence tested except when 
<hali asleep, they may be quite as intelligent as the other Lemuroids, and this opinion is strengthened 
by the fact that the brain of the Indris lauiger is large in proportion to the size of the body ; larger 
indeed in proportion than the brain of any of the others. It is this relative size of the great 
organ of the nervous system which has impressed some zoologists with the propriety of placing this 
Indris at the head of all the Lemuroids, and nearest the Monkeys. 
Hie animals are small in size, and a dried skin measures rather more than a foot and a half in 
length, from the muzzle to the root of the tail, and this latter appendage is thirteen inches long. The 
head is broad over the eyes, which are wide apart, and the muzzle barely projects, and the whole of the 
face is covered with short hairs of a reddish-brown tint. There is a distinct band of whitish fur placed 
across the top of the forehead, and which has fur before and behind it of a darker colour than the lest 
of the hair of the body. This band is curved, and forms a point which projects forward in the middle 
line of the forehead. The fur on the back and Hanks of the body is of a dark grey colour close to the 
•skin, but on its surface the colour is brown more or less rusty. This is the tint on the extremities, the 
grey colour underlying. On the backs of the thighs there are white patches, and at those spots there 
is no deep-seated grey tint. The cylindrical tail is reddish-brown, like the hands and feet. The ears 
are short and rounded, and are generally hairy, but not tufted, and they are hidden in the fur of the 
head. The nostrils are separated by a narrow septum. The feet are short and broad, and the claw of 
the toe is long and cylindrical. 
Although the muzzle is so short, the teeth are set so as to be in a long row on each side, for the front 
cutting teeth are not placed side by side, but in front of each other, and there is a strange gap between 
the inner ones in the upper jaw. Then the canine teeth, seen, of course, only in the upper jaw, are very 
broad, and the next teeth to them (the first pre-molars) are as large as they are. This is a marked pecu- 
liarity, and there is no other creature except man that has these teeth so closely resembling each other. 
To complete the notice of this little highly-constructed Indris it is necessary to remark that its wrist- 
bones resemble in their number and place those of man and the higher Apes. The Gibbons and all the 
other Monkeys have an extra bone to the wrist, called the intermedium , and this is present in the Indris 
already noticed, but it is absent in this Avalii, and in the next kind about to be described. 
The next species to be noticed was never included in the so-called genus Propitliecus, as it has only 
a short stump of a tail, but has always been taken as the special illustration of the group Indris. 
THE SHOET-TAILED INDITES* 
This species can be distinguished from all others by its stump-like tail. It has a long muzzle, 
visible hairy ears, and generally speaking the fur is black ; it is marked, however, with white hairs on 
the fore-arms, back, and hinder quarters. As regards the teeth, there is some variability in the size of 
the upper incisors in different individuals, and the front pair may be smaller or larger than the hind 
pair. The inhabitants of Madagascar call it the Babakoto (baba means “father,” and koto , “boy”). This 
Indris, which attains the height of three feet, is found in the interior of the east of Madagascar ; and 
when Vinson travelled through one of the great forests in that part of the island, he was constantly 
annoyed by the incessant noise made by numerous bands of them, which kept themselves, however, out 
of sight, and hidden in the dense foliage. The natives consider the Babakoto sacred, and believe that 
the trees on which they live yield leaves which will cure all diseases. Moreover, they tell some 
* Indris brevicaudatus . 
