gnawing teeth it rapidly cuts away the bark and wood till it exposes the
burrow of the insect, most probably the soft larva of some beetle, and
then comes into play the extraordinary long wire-like finger, which
enters the small cylindrical burrow, and with the sharp bent claw hooks
out the grub. Here we have a most complex adaptation of different parts
and organs, all converging to one special end, that end being the same
as is reached by a group of birds, the woodpeckers, in a different way;
and it is a most interesting fact that, although woodpeckers abound in
all the great continents, and are especially common in the tropical
forests of Asia, Africa, and America, they are quite absent from
Madagascar. We may, therefore, consider that the aye-aye really occupies
the same place in nature in the forests of this tropical island, as do
the woodpeckers in other parts of the world.


DISTRIBUTION, AFFINITIES, AND ZOOLOGICAL RANK OF MONKEYS.

Having thus sketched an outline of the monkey tribe as regards their
more prominent external characters and habits, we must say a few words
on their general relations as a distinct order of mammalia. No other
group so extensive and so varied as this, is so exclusively tropical in
its distribution, a circumstance no doubt due to the fact that monkeys
depend so largely on fruit and insects for their subsistence. A very
few species extend into the warmer parts of the temperate zones, their
extreme limits in the northern hemisphere being Gibraltar, the Western
Himalayas at 11,000 feet elevation, East Thibet, and Japan. In America
they are found in Mexico, but do not appear to pass beyond the tropic.
In the Southern hemisphere they are limited by the extent of the forests
in South Brazil, which reach about 30 deg. south latitude. In the East,
owing to their entire absence from Australia, they do not reach the