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Show 56 :MAMMALIA. sable to the others, and the toes are all as long and ~exiblc as fingers. In consequence of this,. th.e .whole s~ecies _.climb trees with the greatest facility, while It IS only With pam and difficulty they can stand and walk ~pright; thei: fo~t then resting on its outer edge only, and theu; narrow~elv1s ~emg unfavourable to an equilibrium. They all have mtestmcs very similar to those of man; the eyes directed forwards, the mam, mre 011 the breast, the penis pendent. The brain has three lobes on each side, the posterior of which covers the cerebellum, and the temporal fossre are separated from the orbits by a bony partition. In every thing else, however, they gradually lessen in resemblance to him, by assuming a muzzle more and more elongated, a tail and a gait more like that of quadrupeds. N otwith~tanding this, the freedom of their arms and the complication of their hands allow them all to perform many of the actions of man as well as to imitate his gestures. They have long been divided into two genera, the Mon!teys and the Lemurs, which, by the multiplication. of secondary forms, have now become two small families, between which we must place a third genus that of the Ouistitis, as it is not conveniently referable to the one or the other. SIMIA. Lin. The monkeys are all quadrumana, which have four straight incisors in each jaw, and flat nails on all the extremities; two characters which approximate them more nearly to man, than the subsequent genera; their molares have also blunt tubercles like ours, and their food consists chiefly of fruits. Their canine teeth, however, being longer than the rest, supply them with a weapon we do not possess, and which require a hollow in the opposite jaw, to receive them when the mouth is closed. They may be divided, from the number of their molar teeth, into two principal subgenera, which are again subdivided merous groups.( 1) The {1) Buffon subdivided the monkeys into five tribes : the true mo'R.l,eys without t:~.ils ; the baboons with short tails ; the guenons with long tails and callous. buttocks; the sapajous with long prehensile tails and no callus ; the sagouins with long taih, not prehensile and without callus. Erxleben, adopting this division, translated these names by simia, papio, cercopithecus, cebus and callithrix. Thus it is, that the names cebua and callitkrix, by which the ancients designated monkeys of .AS· QUADRUMANA. 57 MoNKEYs, properly so called, ' o~ those of the eastern continent, have the same number of grinders as Man, but otherwise differing from each other by characters, which have formed the grounds of the following subdivisions. The SrMIA, Erxl.-PrTHEous, Geoffr. The Ourangs( 1) arc the only monkeys of the ancient continent which have no callus on the buttock; their hyoid bone, liver ancl cotcum resemble those of Man. Their nos~ is not prominent, they have no cheek-pouches, nor a vestige of a tail. Some of them have arms long enough to reach the ground when standing-their legs, on the contrary, are very short. ~· satyrus, L.; Audeb., pl. 2; Fr. Cuv. pl. 2. (The OurangOutang. )(2) Of all animals, this Ourang is considered as approaching m.ost nearly to Man in the form of his head, height of forehead, and volume of brain; but the exaggerated descriptions of some authors respecting this resemblance, are partly to be attributed to the fact of their being drawn from young individuals only; and there is every reason to believe, that with age, their muzzle becomes much more prominent. The body is covered with coarse red hair, the face bluish, and the hinder thumbs very short compared with the toes. His lips are sus- ' ceptible of a singular elongation, and possess great mobility. His history has been much disfigured by mingling it with that of the other great monkeys, that of the Chimpanse in particular. After a strict and critical examination, I have ascertained rica and India, have been transferred to those of America. The genus Papio, founded solely on the shortness of the tail, could not be retained, as it violated natural affinities, and all the others required subdividing. It was also necessary to abolish the geijus OuiJJtitis, which was comprised in that of the Sagouins, but which does not altogether con·espond with the common eharacters of the other monkeys. (1) Orang is a Malay word signifying reasonable being, which' is applied to man, the ourang.outang, and the elephant. Outang means wild, or of the wood8: hence, Wild Man of the Woods. (2) The only good figure of the Ourang-Outang we had for a long time was that ofVosmaer, taken from a living specimen at the Hague. That of Uuffon, Supt>l. VIIT, pl. 1, is every way en·oneous; that of Allama.nd (Buff. d'Holl. XV, pl. 11,) is somewhat better-it was copied in Schreber, pl. 2, n. That of Camper, copied ib., pl. 2, C, is tolerably exact, hut is easily discovered to have been taken from the dead body. Bontins, Med. Ind . .84, gives a completely ideal one, although Linmeus took it for the type of his troglodyte (Amam. A c. VI, pl. 1, § 1 ). There are some good ones in Griffith, and in J{rusenstern's Voyage, pl. 94 :md 9.5, but aU of them from young subjects. , . · Vot. I.-II .. . . |
