34 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECBOTE.

a remarkable little animal resembling, as Professor Owen says,
in size and shape the domestic cat, its head and ears being
larger, and its hind legs and tail longer than those of the
cat. Dr. Sandwich, writing of one he had in his possession,
says:—“The thick sticks I put into his cage were bored in
all directions by a large and destructive grub, called the
montouk. Just at sunset the aye-aye crept from under his
blanket, yawned, stretched and betook himself to his tree.
Presently he came to one of the worm-eaten branches, which
he began to examine most attentively, and bending forward
his ears, and applying his nose close to the bark, he rapidly
tapped the surface with the curious second digit, as a wood-
pecker taps a tree, though with much less noise, from time
to time inserting the end of the slender finger into the
worm-holes as a surgeon would a probe. At length he came
to a part of the branch which evidently gave out an inter-
esting sound, for he began to tear it with his strong teeth.
He rapidly stripped off the bark, cut into the wood, and
exposed the nest of a grub which he daintily picked out of
its bed, with the slender, tapping finger, and conveyed the
luscious morsel to his mouth. But I was yet to learn another
peculiarity. I gave him water to drink in a saucer, on which
he stretched out his hand, dipped a finger into it and drew
it obliquely through his open mouth. After a while he lapped
like a cat, but his first mode of drinking appeared to me to
be his way of reaching water in the deep clefts of trees.”
ORDER If, fhe animals which most nearly resemble the
Wing-Handea four-handed animals or quadrumana are the
Animals. wing-handed animals,—the bats or Chetvoptera.
These aré of singular appearence and interesting habit. “If,”
says the Rev. J. G. Wood, “the fingers of a man were to be
drawn out like wire to about four feet in length, a thin
membrane to extend from finger to finger, and another
membrane to fall from the little finger to the ankles, he
would make a very tolerable imitation of a bat.”—Of course,