56 MAMMALIA. . 



sable to the others, and the toes are all as long and llexible as 

 fingers. In consequence of this, the whole species climb 

 trees with the greatest facility, while it is only with pain and 

 difficulty they can stand and walk upright; their foot then 

 resting on its outer edge only, and their narrow pelvis being un- 

 favourable to an equilibrium. They all have intestines very 

 similar to those of man ; the eyes directed forwards, the mam- 

 mae on the breast, the penis pendent. The brain has three 

 lobes on each side, the posterior of which covers the cerebel- 

 lum, and the temporal fossse are separated from the orbits by 

 a bony partition. In every thing else, however, they gradu- 

 ally lessen in resemblance to him, by assuming a muzzle more 

 and more elongated, a tail and a gait more like that of quad- 

 rupeds. Notwithstanding 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 Monkeys 

 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 quadrumaua, v/hich 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 

 generaj 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 thei]i 

 when the mouth is closed. 



They may be divided, from the number of their molar teeth, into 

 two principal subgenera, which arc again subdivided into nu- 

 merous groups, (l) The 



(1) Buffon subdivided the monkeys into five tribes : the true monkeys without 

 tails ; the haboons with short tails ; the gumons with long tails and callous buttocks ; 

 the sapajous with long ^i-ehensile tails and no callus ; the sagouins with long tails, 

 not prehensile and without callus. Erxjeben, adopting this division, translated 

 these names by simia, papio, ccrcopithccusi ccbus and callithrix. Thus it is, that 

 the names ccbus and callithrix, by which the ancients designated monkeys of Af- 



