620 On the Specijic Names of certain Primates. 



1825. Cercopithecus pygerythrns, Desmoulins (part.), Diet, Class. 



d'Hist. Nat. vii. p. 560, and authors generally. (Not of F. Cuvier.) 

 1825. Cercopithecus pusillus, Desmoulins (attributed to Delalande), he. 



cit. vii. p. 668. 

 1842. Cercopithecus lalandii, I. Geoffroy, Diet. Univ. d'Hist. Nat. iii. 



p. 305. 



Cercojnthecus pygerytJii'us is not the only Cuvlerian name 

 for a monkey which needs discussion. In the ' Proceedings 

 of the Zoological Society ' for 1887, p. 624, Dr. Blanford, 

 referring to the mistake made in calling the crab-eating or 

 common macaque, MacacuscyyiamoJgus, called attention to the 

 fact that F. Cuvier named the species Macacus irus as early as 

 in 1818 *. Afterwards, in the ' Fasciculi Malayenses ' (Zool. 

 i. 1903, p. 3), Mr. Bonhote rejects this name and substitutes . 

 for it fascicidaris, Raffles (1822), on the ground that irus was 

 really an African monkey ; but this view seems to me un- 

 tenable for the following reasons : — 



It is true that Cuvier, in the original description of Macacus 

 irusj asserted that the species came from West Africa ; but 

 the characters given cannot be referred to any African monkey, 

 and the figures illustrating the extract from the same descrip- 

 tion in the ' Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes^f clearly 

 represent the crab-eating macaque. Moreover, Cuvier 

 himself, in the description of his Macacus carhonarius \, 

 corrects his former statement about the locality of the common 

 species, giving Sumatra and the neighbouring islands as its 

 true habitat, and confessing he was unaware of the origin of 

 the animal when he described it. The assertion is reinforced 

 by Dr. Anderson's opinion that the " macaque " and the 

 Sumatran ''macaque a face noire" of F. Cuvier are only 

 individual variations of the same species §. 



The locality of Simla fascicidaris being given also as 

 Sumatra, this name becomes a synonym of Macacus irus, 

 which antedates it by four years, and must therefore be 

 adopted for the species. 



It is a pity that the barbarous specific name miriquouina 

 must be used for the South-Brazilian Aotus originally described 

 by Don Felix de Azara and currently known as Aotus azara;. 

 The first name is found, as Pithecia miriquouina, in the 

 " Tableau des Quadrumanes," published b}' E. Geoffroy in the 



* Memoires du Mus. d'Hist. Nat. iv. p. 120. 



t Pis. XXX., xxxi. (1819). 



X Loc, cit. pi. xxxii. (1825). 



§ Auat. & Zool. Res. Yunnan Eipcd. i. p. 75 (1878). 



