20 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM VOL. 125 
rectly, known as Macaca fascicularis, although most current syste- 
matic lists refer to it as Macaca irus. It is understandable that harassed 
research workers should throw up their hands at such an impossible 
situation and end by using its unequivocal common name, the crab- 
eating monkey. The stability-loving primate biologist asks nothing 
more than that he should be able to retire at night with a name on 
his lips that is still valid when he wakes up in the morning. 
A Study Group for Primate Nomenclature and Systematics Re- 
search will be established at the Smithsonian under the aegis of the 
Primate Biology Program. Its purposes will be twofold: immediate 
and long-term. The immediate aim will be to prepare, in the light of 
present knowledge, the best possible working list of primate species 
for use in the Primate Centers and other research laboratories; its 
long-term function will be to determine the areas of primate biology 
where systematics research is most urgently needed, to foster such 
research, and to revise critically the nomenclatorial list from time to 
time as new, irrefutable evidence becomes available. In this way it is 
to be hoped that primate nomenclature will achieve a uniformity in 
primate research that it has never before enjoyed. Total stability of 
nomenclature is something that cannot be guaranteed; to advocate 
such a procedure would be to deny the ebb and flow of scientific 
opinion. Stability, nevertheless, will be the watchword of the Study 
Group and purely technical name changes will be examined very 
critically before the status quo of the working list is disturbed. 
LABORATORY IDENTIFICATION.—The identification of animals at 
specific and subspecific level is a fundamental need in both the re- 
search laboratory and in the museum. The simplest method is by 
means of external characters. In the event, considerable reliance is 
placed on coat coloration. The only means by which this can be 
achieved other than by direct comparison with known specimens is 
by reference to published descriptions. Many of the current de- 
scriptions antedate the introduction of the Ridgway color system and 
are, therefore, unstandardized. The earlier Munsel system has been 
little used in mammalian identification. Even post-Ridgway descrip- 
tions with their innumerable subtypes (1115 in all) of the named 
colors of the spectrum are so complex as to be almost useless in prac- 
tice for the taxonomist and nontaxonomist alike. At best, all qualita- 
tive systems are subjective. 
It is proposed to investigate the feasibility of developing a quanti- 
tative method of determination of coat colors using the technique 
of “reflectance spectrophotometry”’ (Dice, 1947; Hill, 1960). There 
are a number of techniques available for color specification: the 
spectrophotometric curve, the tricolor reflectance value, and the C.I.E. 
