Vol. XXVIII, pp. 179-184 November 29, 1915 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



GENERAL NOTES. 



MACACA VERSUS PITHECUS AS THE GENERIC NAME OF THE 



MACAQUES. 



The monkeys having the common name macaque have long borne the 

 generic designation Macaca Lacepfede, 1799, or the more usual spelling, 

 Macacus Desmarest, 1820. In 1909, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History, series 8, volume 4, page 250, Dr. D. G. Elliot adopted for these 

 monkeys the generic name Pithecus of E. Geofi'roy and G. Cuvier in the 

 Magazin encylopedique, 1795, volume 3, page 462. In the Review of the 

 Primates, volume 2, page 176, Doctor Elliot again uses Pithecus as the 

 generic term for the macaques and in a footnote selects by elimination 

 sinica, the last named species in Geoffroy and Cuvier's Pithecus, as the 

 type of the genus. The other four species included by GeoflTroy and 

 Cuvier are veter, silenus, faunus and cynomolgus . Of these four Doctor 

 Elliot says the first three are undeterminable and that cynomolgus is a 

 Papio and equals Simla hamadryas Linnaeus. 



In 1894, Mr. Oldfield Thomas selected veter as the type of Pithecus 

 (Ann. Mus. Civ. Stor. Nat., Genova, ser. 2, vol. 14, p. 664). He de- 

 liberately did this because Blanford (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1887, 

 p. 622) had shown veter to be an undeterminable species. Thus Pithecus 

 was " consigned to the limbo of unrecognizable names." Mr. Thomas' 

 action appears to me to be final under the International Code of Zoo- 

 logical Nomenclature. His method of selecting the type was by the first 

 species rule and it might be urged that this method has no standing under 

 the Code. It does not seem to be a matter of any importance by what 

 mental process an author arrives at the selection of a genotype so long 

 that one is selected. Doctor Elliot's selection would be equally open to 

 objection as he followed the method of elimination. In view of the 

 possibility that some one might doubt the validity of Mr. Thomas' action, 

 I now deliberately select veter as the type of Geoffroy and Cuvier's genus 

 Pithecus. Hence Pithecus must be dropped as the technical name of the 

 macaques and the more familiar Macaca be restored. 



— M. W. Lyon, Jr. 



39— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. XXVIII, 1915. (179) 



