Generic Names of certain Old- World Monkeys. lyi 



the Singhalese name oF tlie brown langur which he calls 

 Preshytes thersites. All these species are langurs, nearly 

 allied to each other, and no macaque comes into the question. 



Since, then, the genus of langurs has of late years had 

 several changes of name, it appears to me no great harm if a 

 fresh and far earlier name be attached to it, thus removing 

 (so far as this point is concerned) all question as to the 

 extent and validity o{ Pygathrix, and, in fact, at the cost of 

 one more change after many, by putting its date much 

 further back, rendering the name of the genus far more 

 stable than has hitherto seemed likely ever to be the ca<'e. 



The result of this would be that the langurs should be 

 called Pit/iecus and the macaques Miicnca — that is to say, if 

 Simia is removed by Fiat from competition with the latter. 



If, therefore, as almost everyone on this side of the Atlantic 

 hopes will be the case, the Anthropoid names included in the 

 Fiat list published in lOlJ-* are accepted as there advocated, 

 the generic names of the Anthropoids and chief Old-World 

 monkeys will be as follows : — 



Chiiupauzees Anthropojnthecus, Blainv., 1838 (by Fiat). 



Synn. Pan, Oken, 1816, et al. 



Gorilla C^onV/a, I. Geoff., I801'. 



Orangs Simia (by Fiat). 



Synn. Pongo, Lac, et al. 



Langurs Piihecus, Geoff. & Cuv., 1795. 



Synn. Presbytis, Escbsch., 1821 ; Semno- 

 pithecus, Desm., 1822 ; Pygathrix of 

 Elliot's Primates. 



Macaques Macaca, Lac, 1799. 



Synn. Simia, Linn., 1758; MacacuSy Desm.; 

 Pithecus of Elliot. 



Guenon.s Cercopithecujt, Briinn. (removed from Tamarins by 



Fiat t). 



Lasiopyga of Elliot. 



We thus obtain a set of names which are comparatively 

 familiar, and represent to most people the genera to which 

 they are here applied. The names produced by rigid 

 technicality, without Fiat — as, for example, those used in 

 Elliot's ' Primates,' — do not possess any meaning at all to the 

 minds of the majority of naturalists. 



The attachment, apparentl}"^ technically valid, of the one 

 unfamiliar name in the list — Pithecus — to a genus for which 

 no name is now really familiar, appears to me to help greatly 

 to render stable the results at which I arrive. 



• Zool. Anz. xliv. p. 284 (1914). 



t And in no ca.«e properly referabl*> there, aa Gronovius tras not a 

 binomial writ«»r. 



Anu. cC- .l/'T'/. X /7/,s7. iSer. 8. Vol. xvii. l;5 



