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Sub-family Galaginæ, contains only the genus Galago (14 sp.), which is confined to the African continent, ranging from Senegal and Fernando Po to Zanzibar and Natal.

FAMILY 7.-TARSIIDÆ. (1 Genus, 1 Species.)

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION.

ORIENTAL AUSTRALIAN

SUB-REGIONS.

NEOTROPICAL NEARCTIC PALEARCTIC ETHIOPIAN
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The curious Tarsius spectrum, which constitutes this family, inhabits Sumatra, Banca, and Borneo, and is also found in some parts of Celebes, which would bring it into the Australian region; but this island is altogether so anomalous that we can only consider its productions to have somewhat more affinity with the Australian than the Oriental region, but hardly to belong to either. The Tarsier is a small, long-tailed, nocturnal animal, of curious structure and appearance; and it forms the only link of connection with the next family, which it resembles in the extraordinary development of the toes, one of which is much larger and more slender than the rest. (Plate VIII., vol. i. p. 337.)

FAMILY 8.-CHIROMYIDÆ. (1 Genus, 1 Species.)

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION.

ORIENTAL AUSTRALIAN

NEOTROPICAL NEARCTIC PALEARCTIC ETHIOPIAN
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The Aye-aye, (Chiromys), the sole representative of this family, is confined to the island of Madagascar. It was for a long time very imperfectly known, and was supposed to belong to the Rodentia; but it has now been ascertained to be an exceedingly specialized form of the Lemuroid type, and must be considered to be one of the most extraordinary of the mammalia now inhabiting the globe. (Plate VI., vol. i., p. 278.)

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Fossil Quadrumana.

Not much progress has yet been made in tracing back the various forms of Apes and Monkeys to their earliest appearance on the globe; but there have been some interesting recent discoveries, which lead us to hope that the field is not yet exhausted. The following is a summary of what is known as to the early forms of each family:—

Simiida. Two or three species of this family have been found in the Upper Miocene deposits of France and Switzerland. Pliopithecus, of which a species has been found at each locality, was allied to the gibbons (Hylobates), and perhaps to Semnopithecus. A more remarkable form, named Dryopithecus, as large as a man, and having peculiarities of structure which are thought by Gervais and Lartet to indicate a nearer approach to the human form than any existing Ape, has been found in strata of the same age in France.

Semnopithecida.-Species of Semnopithecus have been found in the Upper Miocene of Greece, and others in the Siwalik Hills of N. W. India, also of Upper Miocene age. An allied form also occurs in the Miocene of Wurtemburg. Mesopithecus from Greece is somewhat intermediate between Semnopithecus and Macacus.

Remains supposed to be of Semnopithecus, have also occurred in the Pliocene of Montpellier.

Cynopithecida.-Macacus has occurred in Pliocene deposits at Grays, Essex; and also in the South of France along with Cercopithecus.

Cebidae. In the caves of Brazil remains of the genera Cebus, Mycetes, Callithrix, and Hapale, have been found; as well as an extinct form of larger size-Protopithecus.

Lemuroidea. A true lemur has recently been discovered in the Eocene of France; and it is supposed to be most nearly allied to the peculiar West African genera, Perodicticus and Arctocebus.

Canopithecus, from the Swiss Jura, is supposed to have affinities both for the Lemuridæ and the American Cebidæ.

In the lower Eocene of North America remains have been

discovered, which are believed to belong to this sub-order: but they form two distinct families,-Lemuravida and Limnotherida. Other remains from the Miocene are believed to be intermediate between these and the Cebidæ,-a most interesting and suggestive affinity, if well founded. For the genera of these American Lemuroidea, see vol. i., p. 133.

General Remarks on the Distribution of Primates.

The most striking fact presented by this order, from our present point of view, is the strict limitation of well-marked families to definite areas. The Cebidae and Hapalidæ would alone serve to mark out tropical America as the nucleus of one of the great zoological divisions of the earth. In the Eastern Hemisphere, the corresponding fact is the entire absence of the order from the Australian region, with the exception of one or two outlying forms, which have evidently transgressed the normal limits of their group. The separation of the Ethiopian and Oriental regions is, in this order, mainly indicated by the distribution of the genera, no one of which is common to the two regions. The two highest families, the Simiidæ and the Semnopithecidæ, are pretty equally distributed about two equatorial foci, one situated in West Africa, the other in the Malay archipelago,—in Borneo or the Peninsula of Malacca ;-while the third family, Cynopithecidæ, ranges over the whole of both regions, and somewhat overpasses their limits. The Lemuroid group, on the other hand, offers us one of the most singular phenomena in geographical distribution. It consists of three families, the species of which are grouped into six sub-families and 13.genera. One of these families and two of the sub-families, comprising 7 genera, and no less than 30 out of the total of 50 species, are confined to the one island of Madagascar. Of the remainder, 6 3 genera, comprising 15'species, are spread over tropical Africa; while three other genera with 5 species, inhabit certain restricted portions of India and the Malay islands. These curious facts point unmistakably to the former existence of a large tract of land in what is now the Indian Ocean, connecting Madagascar on the one hand with Ceylon, and with the Malay countries on the

other. About this same time (but perhaps not contemporaneously) Madagascar must have been connected with some portion of Southern Africa, and the whole of the country would possess no other Primates but Lemuroidea. After the Madagascar territory (very much larger than the existing island) had been separated, a connection appears to have been long maintained (probably by a northerly route) between the more equatorial portions of Asia and Africa; till those higher forms had become developed, which were afterwards differentiated into Simia, Presbytes, and Cynopithecus, on the one hand, and into Troglodytes, Colobus, and Cynocephalus, on the other. In accordance with the principle of competition so well expounded by Mr. Darwin, we can understand how, in the vast Asiatic and African area north of the Equator, with a great variety of physical conditions and the influence of a host of competing forms of life, higher types were developed than in the less extensive and long-isolated countries south of the Equator. In Madagascar, where these less complex conditions prevailed in a considerable land-area, the lowly organized Lemuroids have diverged into many specialized forms of their own peculiar type; while on the continents they have, to a great extent, become exterminated, or have maintained their existence in a few cases, in islands or in mountain ranges. In Africa the nocturnal and arboreal Galagos are adapted to a special mode of life, in which they probably have few competitors.

How and when the ancestors of the Cebidae and Hapalidæ entered the South American continent, it is less easy to conceive. The only rays of light we yet have on the subject are, the supposed affinities of the fossil Canopithecus of the Swiss, and the Lemuravida of the North American Eocene, with both Cebidæ and Lemuroids, and the fact that in Miocene or Eocene times a mild climate prevailed up to the Arctic circle. The discovery of an undoubted Lemuroid in the Eocene of Europe, indicates that the great Northern Continent was probably the birthplace of this low type of mammal, and the source whence Africa and Southern Asia were peopled with them, as it was, at a later period, with the higher forms of monkeys and apes.

Order II-CHIROPTERA.

FAMILY 9.—PTEROPIDÆ, (9 Genera, 65 Species.)

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The Pteropidæ, or fruit-eating Bats, sometimes called flyingfoxes, are pretty evenly distributed over the tropical regions of the Old World and Australia. They range over all Africa and the whole of the Oriental Region, and northward, to Amoy in China and to the South of Japan. They are also found in the more fertile parts of Australia and Tasmania, and in the Pacific Islands as far east as the Marianne and Samoa Islands; but not in the Sandwich Islands or New Zealand.

The genera of bats are exceedingly numerous, but they are in a very unsettled state, and the synonymy is exceedingly confused. The details of their distribution cannot therefore be usefully entered into here. The Pteropidæ differ so much from all other bats, that they are considered to form a distinct suborder of Chiroptera, and by some naturalists even a distinct order of Mammalia.

No fossil Pteropidæ have been discovered.

FAMILY 10.—PHYLLOSTOMIDÆ. (31 Genera, 60 Species.)

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION.

NEOTROPICAL NEARCTIC PALEARCTIC ETHIOPIAN

ORIENTAL AUSTRALIAN

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The Phyllostomidæ, or simple leaf-nosed Bats, are confined to the Neotropical region, from Mexico and the Antilles to the

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