Evening star., 1932-05-05
FORBIDDEN FOREST
FOUND IN QUEST OF
MANS ANCESTORS
BIood-Sucking LeeCheS and
NettIes Hide Habitat of
Weird Animals.
HOPKINS MAN DISPUTES
RELATIONSHIP THEORY
Richard Archbold Finds Lemures
in Remote Part of NADIA
gascar.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

A veritable forbidden forest was de-
Scribed before the American Society
of Mammalogists meeting here last
night by Richard Archbold of the
American Museum OF Natural History
Archbold came upon it in Southern
Madagascar while hunting lemurS-
weird nocturnal creatures who stand
just below the monkeys in the scale
of evolution.
In this one narrow forest, about
3 miles wide and so miles long, there
are two varieties of lemurS found
nowhere else in the world. Here they
are undisturbed by hunters. The first
obstacle, Mr. Archbold said, is con-
stituted by hordeS of literally million:
of blood-sucking leeches, which he
compared to swarms of army ants
They cover the Shrubbery and are sure
to fasten themselves on any human
being who encounters them.
NettIe Also on Guard.
If he avoids the leeches the hunter
runs into a peculiar kind of nettle, q
vine which discharges into the all
white, fluffy seeds which will work theil
way through the clothing, as we'll as
attack the unprotected parts Of the
skin. The only way to get rid of them
Is to remove the clothes and thoroughly
wash them.
Because of these two obstacles, he
said, the forest is almost entirely
deserted. A few natives live around the
edges, but seldom venture inside.
In the discussion of lemurS, which
followed Mr. Archbolds paper, DR.. E
Huber of Johns Hopkins University told
the mammalogists that his recent stu
dies on the facial musculature of the
tarSius, one of the weideSt of living
animals which often has been declared
the nearest living relative of man, show
that the strange little Malayan lemur
is not entitled to this distinction. In
some physical characters tarsius, g
nocturnal creature about the size of a
squirrel, is believed to come closer tC
man than any other member of the
general monkey family-even the great
apes. The theory has been that il
represented a special and very early
ofShoot from the simian stock which
later split off into two branches. One
took to life Of seclusion and darkness
and became the little lemur. The other
continued to progress and became man
But, Huber finds, the muSculature il
not such as would indicate an arrested
stage of the evolutionary process which
ended in the extremely intricate human
facial musculature. Rather, he said, il
shows that tarsius is only very highly
specialized lemur.
A picture of animal evolution ir
progress was given by Philip F. Allan oi
the University of Michigan. A few
years ago there was queer little mouse
confined to one of the sandy islands
off the Cape Cod coast. 1t was sc
nicely colored in relation to the sane
dunes that it would become invisible
within about Is feet of an observer
His study showed it has practically
become merged with a close relative
from the mainland in the past few years
so that its chief distinguishing char
acter no longer is evident.
Progress of the biological sciences ir
the Far East and in Russia was
described by Harold J. Coolidge o1
Harvard University.
A recent notable find in Russia, hi
said, was the end of a mammoth:
trunk. This shows the creature really
had long finger-like processes on the
end, almost exactly like those pictured
on ancient cave drawings.