and,
lastly, the so-called flying lemur of the Philippine Islands, or
_Galeopithecus_, which resembles the flying squirrel, and the curious
rodent _Anomalurus_ before referred to.

The only beasts, however, which _truly_ fly are the bats, which form an
order by themselves, well-named, from the structure of their wings,
_Cheiroptera_. The bats which fly about in the twilight in this country,
or sometimes in the afternoon of a warm day in winter, are all
insect-eating forms. But in the warm regions of the Old World, and of
Australia, there are large fruit-eating kinds, called "flying foxes;"
while in South America there are blood-sucking bats, or vampires, some
of which, as we shall hereafter see, present the most curious and
interesting modifications of structure in harmony with their peculiar
habits.

The creatures which are in some respects the most interesting to us,
because they are the most like ourselves in form, are the apes.
Moreover, not only are they so like us in form, but they are so widely
marked-off from all other creatures except ourselves, that it seems
impossible they can have any real affinity to one more than to another
group of mammals below man. Apes and man then together form one order,
which as ranking first was named by Linnaeus, _Primates_. With the apes
are commonly associated certain animals called Lemurs, which inhabit the
vicinity of the Indian Ocean, especially Madagascar. They have not,
however, any real affinity to apes; and if they are to be placed in the
same order at all, they must be well distinguished from its other
members. It has therefore been proposed[12] to divide the order Primates
into two sub-orders (as the hoofed order is divided into the "odd-toed"
and "even-toed" sub-orders), one of these to include man and apes, and
to be called, from the resemblance to the human form pervading it,
"_Anthropoidea_;" the other sub-order to be termed "_Lemuroidea_."

The first "sub-order" is divisible into three "families." One of these
(_Hominidae_) contains man (forming the genus _Homo_), the second
(_Simiadae_) contains all the apes of the Old World only, while a third
(_Cebidae_) contains all those of America.

Amongst the _Simiadae_ are the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and
the long-armed apes (or Gibbons), which are the most man-like of all the
apes; and there can be no question but that there is very much less
difference in structure between these four kinds of apes and man,