RETE MIRABILE. (Original after Murie.)
Greatly magnified, and partly diagrammatic representations of a Rete Mirabile.
A. General appearance. B. Cross section of vessels. C. How the capillary vessels of two sizes join.
The anatomical peculiarities of the Angwántibo have been lucidly described by Prof. Huxley in the “Proceedings of the Zoological Society,” where, from his examination, he substantiates Dr. Gray’s separation of the animal generically from its African mother the Potto.
THE ASIATIC SLOW LEMUROIDS.—THE SLOW LORIS.[140]
There are two well-marked kinds of these Lemuroida to be met with in very large districts in the East, and they live in the tropical woods of Eastern and Southern Hindostan, Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Cochin China, the Malay Archipelago, and in the great Islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. But they do not live together in the same parts.
SLOW LORIS.
(From a sketch by Tickell.)
The first to be noticed has the widest geographical range, and is to be found here and there from Hindostan to China, and from Burmah to the great islands. Hence quite a voluminous history is attached to this animal, whose singular appearance and habits, peculiar anatomy, and geographical distribution, have been the fruitful theme for travellers and naturalists of most European nations. He is called by many names, and is the Bashful Billy—“Chirmundi Billi”—of the Bengalese, or the Slow Lemur, and naturalists term him the Slow Loris, or Kukang (Nycticebus tardigradus). When he is turned out of his quarters in the daytime, he reminds one of a very young, awkward puppy without a tail. But his eyes, however, are enormous and owl-like, and seem to start protuberantly forwards with an unmeaning stare. When his wits return, and the scare ceases, he softly turns on his heel, and with a very slow, measured pace—hand-over-hand, as sailors term it—makes for his box. There is a cool, sedate manner about his whole proceedings which may either be taken for wisdom or stupidity. During the night, when hungry cravings send him forth on his own account, his eyes light up, and he seems more alive to his interests, though seldom increasing the activity of his movements. On a table he waddles like a sailor newly ashore, but with a rope or bough to grasp, by foot or hand, there ensues a grip like a vice, a steady mode of ascent putting him betimes out of reach of danger.
The eye of the Kukang, besides its adaptation to nocturnal vision, in the presence of a tapetum, or silvery lining to the choroid or blood-vessel layer, has also a singular manner of closing. Instead of the eyelids shutting from above downwards, as in the majority of Mammals, they approach obliquely outwards and inwards. This mode of closure is entirely due to an inequality in the fleshy fibres which surround the eyelid, and, together with the large pupil, somewhat elliptical in shape, produces in daylight a very strange, unmeaning look. It has a very odd knack of hanging to boughs, body downwards, and the way in which it is done, asleep or awake, apparently receives explanation from the mode in which certain of the flexor muscles are fastened above the knee-joint. Thus, by simple bending of the leg, the toes are drawn (on bending) together, and hold fast without any sensible muscular exertion. The mechanism, in fact, is similar in kind to that which enables birds to perch while slumbering, or by which Bats adhere to crevices while suspended head downwards. It possesses the peculiar rete mirabile of blood-vessels already noticed.