Tlie other great Mammalia of Sumatra, the elephant and
the rhinoceros, are more widely distributed; but the former
is much more scarce than it was a few years ago, and
seems to retire rapidly before the spread of cultivation.
About Lobo Raman tusks and bones are occasionally found
in the forest, but the living animal is now never seen.
The rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sumatranus) still abounds, and
I 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 round 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. I t 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
t.-hink 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 C^cus 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 anv ordinary means. The tail is prehensile, and is
probably made use of as an additional support while feeding.
I t 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.
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