420 



NATURE 



\August 15, 1878 



the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang and gibbons, fonn a groiip apart 

 from all the others of such importance, that everything related 

 to their history, structure, and habits, has been most assiduously 

 studied, and there is now an immense literature devoted to this 

 group alone. Nothing could better illustrate the advances we 

 have made in a hundred years, than the contrast of our present 

 knowledge of these forms with that of Linnaeus. It is true 

 that, as shown in the most interesting story of the gradual 

 development of our knowledge relating to them in the first 

 chapter of Huxley's "Man's Place in Nature," the animal now 

 called gorilla was, without doubt, the pongo, well known to, 

 and clearly described by, our countryman, Andrew Battle, a 

 contemporary of Shakespeare ; and that a really accurate and 

 scientific account of the anatomy of the chimpanzee had been 

 published as far back as 1699 by Dr. Edward Tyson, who as the 

 first English comparative anatomist, I am proud to claim as in 

 some sort a predecessor in the chair I have the honour to hold 

 in London, as he is described on the title page of his work as 

 " Reader of Anatomy at Chirurgeons' Hall." 



Linnaeus was, however, not acquainted with these, and his 

 second species of the genus Homo, H. troglodytes, and his first 

 of the genus Simla, S. satyrus, were both made up of vague and 

 semi-fabulous accounts of the animals now known as chim- 

 panzees and orangs, but hopelessly confounded together. Of 

 the gorilla, and what is stranger still, of any of the important 

 genus of gibbons or long-armed apes of South-eastern Asia, he 

 had at the time he revised the " Systema " no idea. 



The remaining monkeys, we now know, fall into three very 

 distinct sections : the Cercoplthcclda of the Old World, and the 

 Ceblda and Hapalldit of the New, or by whatever other names 

 we may like to designate them. Although members of all three 

 groups appear in the list in the " Systema," they are all con- 

 fusedly mixed together. Even that the American monkeys 

 belong to a totally different stock from those of the Old World, 

 does not seem to have been suspected. 



The genus Lemur of Linnaeus comprehends five species, of 

 which the first four were all the then known forms of a most 

 interesting section of the Mammalia. These animals, mostly in- 

 habitants of the great island of Madagascar, though some are 

 found in the African continent, and others in some of the 

 Southern and Eastern parts of Asia, constitute a well-defined 

 group, but one of which the relations are veiy uncertain. At 

 one time, as in the system of Linnaeus, they were closely asso- 

 ciated with the monkeys. As more complete knowledge of their 

 organisation has been gradually attained, the interval which 

 separates them structurally from those animals has become con- 

 tinually more evident, and since they cannot be placed within 

 the limits of any of the previously constituted orders, it has been 

 considered advisable by some naturalists to increase the ordinal 

 divisions in their behalf and to allow them to take rank as a dis- 

 tinct group, related to the Piimates on the one hand, and to the 

 Carnlvora and hisectlvora on the other. The knowledge of 

 their relations, however, bids fair to be greatly increased by the 

 discoveries of fossil forms lately made both in France and 

 America, some of which seem to cany their affinities even to the 

 Ungulata. 



Existing upon the earth at present, besides the more ordinary 

 lemurs to which the species known to Linnaeus belong, there 

 are two aberrant forms, each represented by a single species. 

 These are the little Tardus of Borneo and Celebes, and the sin- 

 gular Chiromys, or Aye-aye, which, though an inhabitant of the 

 head-quarters of the group, Madagascar, and living in the same 

 forests and under the same conditions as the most typical lemurs, 

 exhibits a most remarkable degree of specialization in the 

 structure both of limbs and teeth, the latter being modified so as 

 to resemble, at least superficially, those of the Rodents, a group 

 with which in fact it was once placed. It was discovered by 

 Sonnerat in Madagascar in 1 780, two years after the death of 

 Linnffius. The specimen brought to Paris by this traveller was 

 the only one known until i860. Since that date, however, its 

 native land has been more freely open than before to explorers, 

 and many specimens have been obtained, one having lived for 

 several years in the Gardens of the London Zoological Society. 



The history of a name is often not a little curious. Linnaeus 

 applied the term Letnures, i.e., the departed spii-its of men, to 

 these animals on account of their nocturnal habits and ghost -like 

 aspect. The hypothetical continent in the Indian Ocean, sup- 

 posed to have connected Madagascar with the Malayan Archi- 

 pelago is called by Mr. Sclater, Lemuria, as the oresumed 

 ongmal home of the lemur-like animals. Although the steps 



are not numerous, it might puzzle a classical scholar, ignorant of 

 zoology, to explain the connection between this continent and 

 the Roman festival of the same name. 



The fifth animal which Linnreus places in his genus Lemur, 

 under the name of L. volans, is the very singular creature to 

 which the generic term Galeopithectts has since been applied. It 

 is one of those completely aberrant forms, which having no near 

 existing relations, and none yet discovered among extinct forms, 

 are perfect puzzles to systematic zoologists. It is certainly not a 

 lemur, and not a bat, as has been supposed by some. We 

 shrink from multiplying the orders for the sake of single genera 

 containing only two closely allied species ; so we have generally 

 allowed it to take refuge among the Insectlvora, though without 

 being able to show to which of that somewhat heterogeneous 

 group it has any near affinities. 



The fourth genus of the Primates is Vespertillo, comprising 

 six species of bats. This genus has now by universal consent 

 expanded into an order, and one of the best characterised and 

 distinctly circumscribed of any in the class : indeed those who 

 have worked most at the details of the structure of bats, find so 

 much diversity in the characters of the skull, teeth, digestive 

 organs, &c., associated with the modification of the fore-limbs 

 for flight common to all, as almost to entitle them to be regarded 

 rather as a sub-class. Anatomical, as well as palreontological 

 evidence, show that they must have diverged from the ordinary 

 mammalian type at a very far distant date, as the earliest known 

 forms, from the eocene strata, are quite as specialised as any now 

 existing, and no ti'ace has hitherto been discovered of forms 

 linking them to any of the non-volant orders. By the publica- 

 tion within the last few weeks of a valuable monogi-aph on the 

 existing species of the group, entitled "A Catalogue of the 

 Chiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum," by G. E. 

 Dobson, we are enabled to contrast our present knowledge with 

 that of the time of Linnaeus. Although the author has sup- 

 pressed a large number of nominal species which formerly en- 

 cumbered our catalogues, and wisely abstained from the tendency 

 of most monographists to multiply genera, he describes four 

 hundred species, arranged in eighty genera : nearly double the 

 number of species, and exactly double the number of genera, of 

 the whole class Mammalia in the "Systema Naturae," and these 

 Dr. Giinther remarks in his preface are probably only a portion 

 of those existing. The small size, nocturnal habits, and difficulty 

 of capture of these animals, are sufficient reasons for the suppo- 

 sition that there are still large numbers unknown to science. In 

 the list of Linnaeus, the first primary group of Dobson, the 

 Alegachiroptera, now containing seventy species, is represented 

 by a single one V. Vampyrus, obviously a Pteropus, to which the 

 bloodthirsty habits of the fabulous vampyre are attributed, but 

 which is not absolutely identified with any one of the known 

 species. The other species described by Linnaeus can almost all 

 be identified with bats at present well known, 



A curious example of the results of basing classification upon 

 a few, and those somewhat artificial characters, is afforded by 

 one of the true bats, now called Noctillo lepoiinus, though ad- 

 mitted by Linnaeus to be ^^ siviillimus vespertilionlbus similiter 

 pedibus alatus, " being separated from the others, not only generic- 

 ally, but even placed in another order, that of the Glires or 

 Rodents, because it did not, or was supposed not to, fall under 

 the definition of the order Primates, which begins " Denies pri- 

 mores incisores siipej-iores LV. paralleli. ' In reality this bat has 

 four upper incisors, but the outer ones are so small as to have 

 been overlooked when first examined. But even if this were 

 not so no one would now dream of basing an animal's position 

 upon such a trivial character when^ opposed to the totality of its 

 organization and habits. 



The characters of the incisor teeth are placed in the first rank 

 in the definitions of all the orders in the " Systema Naturae,"" 

 and hence the next order called Bruta, characterized by " detttes 

 primores nulli superius out inferius," contains a curious mixture 

 of heterogeneous animals, as the names of the genera Elephas, 

 Trichechus, Bradypus, Myrmecophaga, Manis, and Dasypus will 

 indicate. In contains, in fact, all the animals then known com- 

 prised in the modern orders of Prcboscidea, Sirenia, and Eden- 

 tata, together with the walrus, one of the Carnivora. The name 

 BrtUa has been revived for one of these orders, that more gene- 

 rally called Edentata, but I think very inappropriately, for it 

 was certainly not equivalent, and if retained at all, should ^f-ther 

 belong to the Proboscidea, as Elephas stands first m the list ot 

 genera, and was probably in the mind of Linnaeus when he 

 assigned the name to the group. 



