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Show 1901.] LEMUR MONGOZ AND L. RUBRIVENTER. 265 the coloured figure of the male of Lemur rubriventer in the Hist, Nat. de Madagascar1. Having known the Lemur rubriventer in life, without ever having seen this " cobalt-blue " ring in the male, I had already arrived at the conclusion that it was merely the outcome of the artist's highly coloured imagination. The specimens in the Gardens show that the region in question has in both sexes about the coloration of the lower figure in plate 169 of the quoted work, viz. dark grey with a bluish tinge. The examination of one of the types of Geoffroy's Lemur fiaviventer in the Leyden Museum showed that Schlegel was perfectly justified in considering this form to be the female of Lemur rubriventer. Apart from the slight variation in the coloration, the two agree absolutely in all other features, including the very characteristic conformation of the cranium. The skull of a male Lemur nigerrimus presented by Mr. Stanley Flower2 agrees in almost every particular with the one figured in Grandidier's work ', and is therefore very distinct from the skull of L. rubriventer. Lemur rubriventer has, in fact, very few of the characteristic features of the other species of the genus, but on the other hand some striking peculiarities of its own; and I perfectly remember how much I was puzzled when I first met with this species in the forests of Ivohimanitra. The head is roundish, the face being much less produced and the hinder portion broader than in all the other species. The ears are comparatively small, hairy and hidden, as it were, in the fur, as already perfectly characterized by Schlegel *. The skull is short and broad, and massive ; the facial cranium remarkably short for a Lemur s. But the most peculiar feature in the skull of this species is a pneumatic cavity, developed in the palatal and which, with the increase in age of the animal, becomes so much enlarged that it pervades the whole of the bottom of the orbit, and, in the basis cranii, considerably narrows the posterior openings of the nares (PI. XXII. fig. 7). In an advanced foetus the pars perpendicularis of the palatal exhibits already, just above the posterior margin of the bony palate, the opening of a small recess, which extends in a supero-lateral direction; as a consequence, the palatal appears slightly inflated in the orbit. In the next stage available (PI. XXII. fig. 6, a young individual), the opening of the incipient sinus is oval-shaped, its long axis parallel to the long axis of the cranium ; it is situated almost entirely behind the bony palate, so that it is visible in the horizontal lower view of 1 PI. 167. 2 Brit. Mus. Z. D. No. 0.8.6.21 ; from the Ghizeh Zool. Gardens. This specimen bred with a J i. macaco, and the young is stated to have been like the mother. 3 PI. 188. 1 " Oreilles passablement petites, fortement velues dans toute leur etendue et coinme cachees dans le pelage de la tete." (Monogr. Singes, p. 311.) 1 Grandidier's plate 191 (" Lemur jlavivetiter") conveys a good general idea of the skull of Lemur rubriventer. |