After keeping these lemurs about a year, I found that by no amount of kindness or coaxing could I get them to be really friendly, and I feared they were not over-happy without companions of their own kind. They were doubtless caught too old to be tamed. It was therefore deemed best to present them to the Zoo, where, under the kind and skilful treatment they receive, they are, I believe, in splendid health and spirits.
Visitors to the monkey-house can identify them from the description I have here given, and cannot fail to admire the agile movements and furry beauty of my quondam pets.
TOMMY AND PEARLIE.
“So abundant, indeed, are lemurs in Madagascar, that, according to M. Grandidier, who has done so much to increase our knowledge of this group, at least one individual is almost sure to be found in every little copse throughout the island.”
TOMMY AND PEARLIE.
ALTHOUGH I was unsuccessful in taming my handsome ruffed lemurs, Spectre and Phantom, I felt that lemurs were delightful animals to keep as pets, and I resolved that if an opportunity offered for obtaining other and more tameable specimens of the same kind I would certainly try again, and with my past experience I hoped to attain good results.
One day I heard that a young specimen of a Ruffed Lemur had been seen in a cage at the top of a cart full of birds and curious animals, a sort of small travelling menagerie which was stopping for a few days at a town five miles off. A mounted messenger was sent off at once with a basket, and full directions about the purchase of the little lemur, and, to my great delight, when the man returned with it, it proved to be all I could desire, quite young and healthy and very tame.
It must have been a pleasant change from the cold, draughty cage it had been used to, to the large wired-in recess in my conservatory, which was always kept at a genial temperature, and where, leaping from branch to branch, the agile little creature could play its graceful frolics from morning till night, hanging head downwards, swinging on a trapeze like a born acrobat, and evidently enjoying its life as much as if it had been in its native woods. The showman had always called the lemur Tommy, so we supposed that was an indication of its sex, and retained the name to which it had been accustomed.