Part 25

DISTRIBUTION.--This species occurs on the north-west coast of Madagascar, between the Bay of Mozamba to the north and the River Manjaray on the south, ranging over the country to a considerable distance into the interior. The lighter-coloured specimens come from the more northern range of the species, while the more brightly-marked varieties have been obtained {104}in the interior more to the south. It is curious, remarks M. Grandidier, to find races and species of the same genus so exactly restricted, that one has only to cross a river, not necessarily large, in order to obtain on one bank certain species of Propithecus, whereas those occurring on the opposite bank may be of a very distinct species or race. To what influence in their surroundings can all these variations be ascribed? One can understand that species inhabiting a wooded and humid country, or living among granitic mountains (as P. diadema does), would differ in size and fur from other members of the same genus which live in dry and arid plains (as in the case of P. verreauxi); but how can the great variations that occur in members of the same species living a few miles, and perhaps only a few metres, apart, be explained, when the external conditions are almost the same?

HABITS.--The habits of the different species of Sifaka are very similar. They live in companies of six or eight, and are very gentle and inoffensive animals, wearing always a most melancholy expression, and, as a rule, being morose, inactive, and more silent than other Lemurs. They rarely live long in captivity. In their native state they are most alert in the morning and evening, as during the heat of the day they conceal themselves amid the foliage of the trees. When asleep or in repose, the head is dropped on the chest and buried between the arms, the tail rolled up on itself and disposed between the hind-legs. The Sifakas live exclusively on vegetable substances--leaves, fruits and flowers--their diet not being varied, as in the other groups, by small birds, eggs, or insects. Their life is almost entirely arboreal, for which the muscles of their hands and feet, as well as the parachute-like fold of skin between their arms and body, and their peculiarly hook-like fingers, are most fitted. The young one is carried about by its mother on her back, its hands grasping her arm-pits tightly. The Sifakas are held in great veneration or fear by the natives of Madagascar, and are never intentionally killed by them.

PLATE XII.

{105}THE ENDRINAS. GENUS INDRIS.

Indris, Cuv. et Geoffr., Mag. Encycl., 2 ed. Ann. i., p. 46 (1796); Milne-Edwards and Grandid., Hist. Nat. Madag., Mamm., i., p. 330 (with full synonymy).

This genus is, like the first of the sub-family, monotypic, no second species having rewarded the many explorers of Madagascar in the long period that has elapsed since its solitary species was discovered. This species is known as

I. THE ENDRINA. INDRIS BREVICAUDATUS.

Indris brevicaudatus, Geoffr., Mag. Encycl., 2 ed. Ann., p. 46 (1796).

Indris variegatus, Gray, Ann. and Mag. N. H. (4), x., p., 474 (1872).

Indris brevicaudatus, Milne-Edwards and Grandid., Hist. Nat. Madag., Mamm., i., p. 336 (with full synonymy), Atlas, pls. xi.-xii.

(Plate XII.)

CHARACTERS.--The peculiar features of the species, as given below, are necessarily those of the genus also.

Fur long and woolly, extremely variable in its coloration. Head rounded, longer than it is broad; muzzle moderately long, covered with very short hairs; fingers and toes haired to the finger-tips; external ears rounded, exserted, and more developed than in Avahis or Propithecus, with long and tufted {106}hair forming a fringe all round. Median nose-pad high and narrow; pupil of eye circular; body elongated; arms about one quarter of the length of the legs; hands very long, the four outer fingers united by a membrane as far as the first joint, and the toes to the centre of their middle segments; hands and feet haired to the tips. Tail rudimentary.

Skull longer and less vaulted; brain-case proportionately more compressed from side to side; the muzzle longer, and the orbit smaller, than in Avahis; floor of orbit higher than the bony margin of the jaw; inter-orbital space flat; nasal bones, though long, not extending in front as far as the end of the pre-maxillary bone; mandible elongated, narrower, and less deep than in Avahis. Bony palate short, posterior margin thickened, and with a foramen behind the posterior molar; line of union of the two halves of the lower jaw shorter than in Avahis; its angle very large. No central bone in the wrist (or carpus); hind-limb (with or without the foot), compared with the fore-limb (with or without the hand), longer than in any other of the Primates, except Galago. Upper teeth: Incisors, sub-equal, set close together and subject to variation in size; canine, vertically taller than, and not separated by a gap from, the pre-molar; pre-molars compressed, and having an inner cusp; anterior molars, four-cusped, with the supplementary cusps weak, and with no oblique ridge; anterior and median, with their outer and inner cusps opposite; posterior molar, which is the smallest grinder of the jaw--four-cusped, with transverse, but no oblique ridges. Lower teeth: Incisors, with marked longitudinal ridges to the outside (peculiar to this genus); pre-molars sub-equal; molars all four-cusped, and the posterior ones expanded behind.

Brain highly organised. A large laryngeal pouch (present {107}also in the foetus), but differing from that of the Apes, is placed between the gullet and windpipe, communicating with the latter by an orifice: main arteries of the fore- and hind-limbs not broken up into a rete mirabile of small parallel vessels, as in many species of Lemurs.

Face naked, sometimes blackish, generally dark grey; lips downy; head, neck, back, shoulders, arms, and hands, deep black; fore-arms faintly washed with rufous; a large patch, widening from the middle of the back downwards to the lower back, rump, and root of the tail pure white, washed with orange or red; a patch on each flank, pale, becoming rufous or greyish-white, separated from the rump-spot by black bands continuing down the outer side of the inner face of the thighs, and the front and inner sides of the legs; thighs ashy-grey, their upper two-thirds greyish, becoming black on the front, and ashy-grey on the hinder surface, of the leg. Feet black; tail stumpy, fawn-colour, brownish-grey at the tip; under side rusty brown; abdomen grey; heel rufous.

Many varieties of this species have been met with. Of these, some have the top of the head and between the eyes greyish-white, mixed here and there with black; jaws and throat, grey; ears, neck, back and upper part of arms, black; the fore-arms grey; the hands black; a patch on the lower back ashy-grey; flanks bright rufous; legs grey; band on front of the thighs black; heel bright rufous.

Other examples have a mark over each eyebrow, the fore-limbs nearly to the hands, the hinder part of the thighs, the legs from the knee to the ankle, and the whole under side iron-grey; the ankles and hind part of the heels white, yellow below. (Indris variegatus, Gray.)

All stages between the forms here described and complete {108}albinos are known; so that the various differences observed prove them to be only individual variations of the same species.

DISTRIBUTION.--The Endrina is confined to the woods looking eastward, on the two high ranges along the eastern coast, between the Bay of Antongil on the north and the River Masora on the south.

HABITS.--The "Endrina," "Bàbakòto," or "Amboanala" (Dog of the Forest), as the natives variously name this species, has the same habits as the Sifakas. It is the largest of the Lemurs, and is diurnal. It derives its appellation of "Dog of the Forest" from the doleful, dog-like howls which it utters. In this habit it differs, therefore, from most of the other groups (except the True Lemurs), which are, as a rule, rather silent. Its powerful voice is due to the distensible resonator which it possesses in its laryngeal pouch, described above. Essentially diurnal, the Endrinas live in small companies, and feed only on vegetable diet. The hook-like fingers of their hands are better adapted for climbing than for prehension, and much of their food is, indeed, seized by the mouth. They are entirely arboreal, and move about the trees in an erect position, rarely coming to the ground. The "Bàbakòto" is held in great veneration by most of the native tribes.

M. Pollen gives several other particulars of these Lemurs, and of the curious notions of the Malagasy respecting them. Their native name is "Bàbakòto," literally "Father-child" (or "boy"), not "Indri," as stated by Sonnerat, who discovered the species. Indri, or Indry, is a Malagasy word meaning "lo!" or "behold!" and was probably mistaken by him and other Europeans for the vernacular name of the animal when the {109}natives exclaimed, "Indry izy!" ("There he is!"). Dr. A. Vinson says that, in passing through the great Eastern forest, he was assailed for two days by the incessant clamour of these Lemurs, which seem to keep together in large companies, but are invisible in the dense foliage. The natives have a superstitious veneration for these animals, and consider them as sacred. They believe that their ancestors change after death into Bàbakòto, and that the trees where these animals live supply infallible remedies against otherwise incurable diseases. The people say that it is very dangerous to kill these Lemurs with spears, because if a spear is hurled against one of them it seizes the spear in its flight without being itself hurt, and in its turn stabs with certain aim those attacking it. They also relate that when the female has borne a young one, she takes the little creature in her arms and tosses it to her mate, who is seated on a neighbouring tree, and that he throws it back to the female. If the little one does not fall to the ground after being subjected to this exercise for a dozen times, the parents bring it up with the greatest care; but, if the contrary event happens, they abandon it, not even troubling to pick it up. In certain parts of Madagascar, says M. Pollen, the people employ the Bàbakòto in chasing birds, and they say that it renders as good service as a Dog. These animals, although principally fruit-eaters, do not disdain small birds, which they catch with much skill, in order to eat their brains.

This Lemuroid is probably the best known to travellers in Madagascar, at least by ear, as no one can travel along the most frequented route in the island, that from Tamatave to Antananarivo, without often hearing the cries of these animals as he passes through the great forest. They are not often seen, but their long drawn-out melancholy cries are frequently heard, a {110}strange wailing sound, as if of people in distress, or children crying. Dr. Vinson says that the Bètànimèna tribe let these animals at liberty if they find them in captivity, and give them burial should they find them dead. They relate that a certain tribe, at war with its neighbours, took refuge in the forests; their enemies, in pursuing them, led by the sound of human voices, as they supposed, found before them a troop of Bàbakòto, at whose appearance they were struck with terror. They fled, persuaded that the fugitives had been changed into beasts. These, on the other hand, vowed eternal gratitude to the Lemurs who had saved them, and have ever since religiously refrained from injuring them in any way.

EXTINCT LEMUROIDEA.

On a former page (anteà, p. 13), attention was drawn to the interrupted distribution of the Lemurs, and to their present restricted range to the tropical and sub-tropical regions of Africa, of Madagascar, and of part of the mainland and of the islands of the Asiatic continent. In times geologically not very remote, they were inhabitants of both worlds.

The earliest appearance of the Primates in time is at the beginning of the Tertiary period. Lemuroids, some of them of a more or less primitive type, then lived in Europe in the Lower Eocene period. In the higher beds of the same epoch (to which the fresh-water deposits of the London clay of England, the Plastic clay of France, and the prolific Wasatch beds of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado of America belong) undoubted Lemurs are represented by many genera, which in the Middle Eocene attained to a great development.

In the Upper Eocene of Europe many distinctively {111}Lemuroid genera (Adapis, Microchærus, &c.) "formed," as Zittel remarks, "a very characteristic element of the fauna; they are connected with old Tertiary fore-runners, and combine features of the existing Lemurs and true Apes." The presence of these heat-loving animals in such northern latitudes undoubtedly indicates the existence there of a climate more genial at that epoch than now. In the corresponding period in North America remains have been less plentifully found; but for the most part the genera are representatives of those of the European beds.

In strata of Oligocene and older Miocene age no Lemuroid remains have come to light in Europe, and they are represented by only one or two doubtful forms in America. After that date they apparently vanished from the New World and from the northern portions of the Old.