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Show 248 DR. 0. I. FORSYTH MAJOR ON [Mar. 19, the face above ; the apex of the clypeus is broadly pallid yellow and is sparsely punctured and almost bare. Mesonotum and scutellum distinctly brassy, closely punctured ; the scutellum is broadly depressed in the middle. Post-scutellum unarmed and thickly covered with white pubescence. Basal area of median segment bare, shining and irregularly reticulated. Wings clear hyaline; the stigma and nervures black. Legs black, thickly covered with white hair; the hinder femora are dilated, above they have a rounded curve from the base to the apex ; the tibiae are not much narrower than the femora and become gradually wider from the base to the apex, which is straight and oblique, their upper side is rounded, their lower straight; the calcaria and spines are pale. The abdomen at the base has bluish tints ; the segments are ringed with white hair at the apices. 2. On Lemur mongoz and Lemur rubriventer. By C. I. FORSYTH MAJOR, F.Z.S. [Received March 4, 1901.] (Plate XXII.1) (Text-figures 61-70.) It is well known to those who have approached the subject that w e are not yet satisfactorily acquainted with the members of the genus Lemur, and that the synonymy of the species is therefore far from being settled. The reasons for this state of things are also known, at least in great part. Some of the species vary considerably in the coloration of their skin. In others the male is different from the female in outer appearance. In others again two different species resemble each other in external characters. Quite a number of so-called species have been introduced without sufficient descriptions, aud, the types being lost or uncertain, it is impossible exactly to know what their authors had in view. In menageries, different varieties of the same species, or two different species, have been again and again crossed together, and there is every likelihood that in more than one instance species have been founded upon hybrids. With the exception of, perhaps, the Paris Museum, no collection contains sufficient materials for our present exigencies. And, last not least, the species have without one single exception been based upon external characters, and the skull especially has been almost entirely overlooked. Scblegel's excellent ' Monographic des Singes' of 1876, the fruit of researches extending over fifty years, is still the standard work from which we have to start when studying most of the 1 For explanation of the Plate, see p. 268. |