continually saw its tracks and its dung, and once disturbed one feeding,
which went crashing away through the jungle, only permitting me a
momentary glimpse of it through the dense underwood. I obtained a
tolerably perfect cranium, and a number of teeth, which were picked up
by the natives.
Another curious animal, which I had met with in Singapore and in Borneo,
but which was more abundant here, is the Galeopithecus, or flying lemur.
This creature has a broad membrane extending all around its body to the
extremities of the toes, and to the point of the rather long tail. This
enables it to pass obliquely through the air from one tree to another.
It is sluggish in its motions, at least by day, going up a tree by short
runs of a few feet, and then stopping a moment as if the action was
difficult. It rests during the day clinging to the trunks of trees,
where its olive or brown fur, mottled with irregular whitish spots and
blotches, resembles closely the colour of mottled bark, and no doubt
helps to protect it. Once, in a bright twilight, I saw one of these
animals run up a trunk in a rather open place, and then glide obliquely
through the air to another tree, on which it alighted near its base, and
immediately began to ascend. I paced the distance from the one tree to
the other, and found it to be seventy yards; and the amount of descent
I estimated at not more than thirty-five or forty feet, or less than
one in five. This I think proves that the animal must have some power of
guiding itself through the air, otherwise in so long a distance it would
have little chance of alighting exactly upon the trunk. Like the
Cuscus of the Moluccas, the Galeopithecus feeds chiefly on leaves, and
possesses a very voluminous stomach and long convoluted intestines. The
brain is very small, and the animal possesses such remarkable tenacity
of life, that it is exceedingly difficult to kill it by any ordinary
means. The tail is prehensile; and is probably made use of as an
additional support while feeding. It is said to have only a single young
one at a time, and my own observation confirms this statement, for I
once shot a female with a very small blind and naked little creature
clinging closely to its breast, which was quite bare and much wrinkled,
reminding me of the young of Marsupials, to which it seemed to form a
transition. On the back, and extending over the limbs and membrane, the
fur of these animals is short, but exquisitely soft, resembling in its
texture that of the Chinchilla.
I returned to Palembang by water, and while staying a day at a village
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