[44] This is the flying lemur (Galeopithecus philippinensis; called kaguang or caguan by the Visayans), an animal belonging to the Quadrumana, and the Prosimidae (semi-apes).  Alfred R. Wallace found it in Sumatra, Borneo, and Singapore; see his description of it in Malay Archipelago (New York, 1869), pp. 145, 146.  Jagor found it in Samar—­Travels in the Philippines (English translation, London, 1875), pp. 242-244.  See also Delgado’s description (Historia, p. 845).  This lemur has, like the flying squirrel, a volucral membrane, which not only covers all its limbs but reaches to its tail; and thus the creature glides from tree to tree.  This explains the writer’s allusion to it as a bird.

[45] The creature thus described is the tarsier (Tarsius spectrum), belonging to the same class (semi-apes) as the lemur, ante. Jagor (ut supra, p. 252) was told in Luzon that it could be found only in Samar, and that it lived exclusively on charcoal—­of course, an erroneous notion.  In Samar it was called mago or macauco. The Report of U.S.  Philippine Commission for 1900 (iii, p. 311) mentions several Islands as its habitat, and the belief of the natives that it lives on charcoal.  Delgado cites the same notion (Historia, p. 875); he supposes the tarsier to be a sort of wild cat.

[46] The gecko (Gecko verticillatus), a reptile allied to the lizard.  Two species of this animal in the Philippines frequent the houses:  one very small, which feeds on mosquitoes, flies, and other pests, and works noiselessly; the other larger (up to eight inches long) with a heavy body and a loud call.  The latter is, to judge from Delgado’s description (Historia,p. 885) the one mentioned in our text.

[47] The cuttlefish, or octopus (Sepia octopus).

[48] This was in 1609, and the fort erected was that of Tandag; it was on a bay on the northeast coast of Surigao province, Mindanao.

[49] Apparently the same as the present Gigaquit, a town an the northeast coast of the province of Surigao.

[50] Juan de la Madre de Dios assumed the habit of the discalced Augustinians at Valladolid, making his profession in 1615.  With eight other missionaries, he arrived at Manila in 1620; and some two years later he entered the Mindanao mission.  His ministry there was short; for toward the end of 1623 he was slain by a fierce Moro chief whom he had rebuked for his acts of injustice and tyranny.  See sketches of his life, in Luis de Jesus’s Historia, pp. 53-55; and Provincia de S. Nicolas de Tolentino, pp. 308, 309.

[51] Apparently referring to the missions founded by the Jesuits, some years before, in northern Mindanao; see Vol.  XIII, pp. 48, 80.  Fuller accounts of these missions are given in Combes’s Historia de Mindanao, which will be presented in later volumes of this series.