Scientific Notices. 137 
science, they utterly deny to the pretensions of M. Lesson. It is strange 
to observe in the very page where this writer passes his judgment so 
dogmatically upon the labours of his fellow naturalists, how much he 
exposes his want of qualifications asa judge. From him asa voyager, 
and a voyager in the countries where these animals abound, some elu- 
cidation might have been expected of their economy, and of their 
specifick characters, hitherto so little understood. But he has left con- 
fusion worse confounded. The very animal which comes next in affinity 
to the two which are now before us, he has represented as belonging to 
two totally distinct species. In the ‘* Manuel de Mammalogie”’ he as- 
serts that the Hylobates agilis “is the Simia Lar of Sir Rafies.’’* 
In the page of the “ Bulletin” before us, he pronounces, with equal 
confidence, that the same animal “is evidently the Ungka puti of Sir 
Raffles.’ In this last assertion he happens to be correct. And 
he owes this chance to his having been set right in the very Paper 
which he attacks, and by the same authours upon whom he so dogmati- 
cally animadverts.—Hinc ille lacryme.—But he has not the grace to 
acknowledge the correction. He gives his information as emanating 
from himself. Both his contradictory assertions stand forward with the 
support of the same dictatorial language and pomp of authority. And 
the mystified student of the Quadrumana hesitates in dismay to which he 
shall give credit of these rival “‘ Sir Oracles” of the “‘ Manuel’? and the 
** Bulletin.” 
The second animal of which mention is made by Mr. Vigors and Dr. 
Horsfield is one which they represented as closely allied to the Simia 
nasica of Linneus, if not the young of that species. Here again they 
merely suggested the specifick difference between the animals alluded to, 
and called the attention of naturalists to the determination of the point. 
They even went so far as to assign their reasons for bringing into notice so 
doubtful a point ;—* considering,” as they aver, ‘that they will add 
* “ Gibbon agile, Hyl. agilis, F. Cuv. C’est le Simia Lar de Sir Raffles.” 
Man, de Mamm, p. 31. 
+ “L’ Ungka puti de Sir Raffles est evidemment le Wou-wou de M. F. Cuvier, 
“ ou VHyl. agilis.” Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles, Mars 1829, p. 454. It 
is to be borne in mind that Sir Stamford Raffles’s Simia Lar, or Ungka etam of 
the Malays, is the Hyl. Rafflesii of M. Geoff, St. Hilaire, and that his Ungka 
puti, is the true Hyl. agilis, 
