278 Further Observations 



semblance, likeness, or similarity, and not inclusiveness, as he 

 supposes. 



If Mr. Strickland find this suggestion correct, I think he 

 will admit it to be decisive of the question, in my favour, even 

 upon his own grounds ; but at all events, the zoological ap- 

 plication of the affix in question is equally conventional, ei- 

 ther upon Mr. Strickland's principle or mine, and I must be 

 pardoned for observing that the perseverance with which my 

 application is criticised, in spite of its priority, is but an ex- 

 ample of the indulgence displayed towards one's own doxy, 

 and the intolerance towards every other man's doxy, which is 

 inseparable from the very spirit of " legislation." Whether 

 the term Simiada be employed to denote the anthropomor- 

 phous Quadrumana of the old world or the anthropomorphous 

 Pedimana of the new, its use is equally arbitrary ; since its 

 original import no more expresses the relation of the baboons 

 to the apes, than of the American monkeys to the African : 

 and as to the memoria technica which Mr. Strickland insists 

 so much upon securing, by calling the American animals Ce- 

 bidw, because they contain the genus Cebus, the advantage 

 is of mighty small consequence, since the term, at most, sug- 

 gests but a single genus, whilst there are nine or ten others 

 to which it furnishes no key whatever. 



To my question, " what would science gain by the change 

 of Simiadce into Cebidce f -V. Mr. Strickland answers, "it 

 would gain a term implying that the family contains the ge- 

 nus Cebus, (which it does), instead of one implying that it 

 contains the genus Simia, (which it does not)." With great 

 deference to Mr. Strickland, neither of these terms implies ei- 

 ther one or other of the things which he has here supposed, 

 except by the operation of his own rule, which, being the sub- 

 ject matter in dispute, cannot be appealed to in proof of its 

 own propriety. But this is a sophism, which, as I have had 

 occasion to remark elsewhere, runs through the whole of Mr. 

 Strickland's argument. Neither is Mr. Strickland correct in 

 accusing me of " altogether discarding the Linnean term Si- 

 mia, since I really retain it, not only in its legitimate accepta- 

 tion,but as the name of a more important group than he wishes 

 to assign it to. 



In refusing to limit the term Simia> to the orangs, for which 

 I stated my reasons at length in my former " Observations," 

 without meaning, in the most remote degree, to apply any of 

 the "cardinal sins" there enumerated, to Mr. Strickland, though 

 I regret to find him labouring under this misconception, I 

 stated, that, had I done so, " I should have been using the 

 term in a new sense, different from its legitimate acceptation, 



