MONKEYS. 95 



certain it is, that tnese animals most ludicrously pos- 

 sess this propensity, and that those we have seen as 

 pets, would almost perform any thing once pointed out 

 to them,, and would always make the attempt. 



For the arrangement of these animals in the de- 

 scriptive part of our volume, we have followed the old 

 practice of dividing them into two great geographical 

 groups, while we have introduced most of the new 

 genera. This plan we found to be the most convenient 

 during the progress, and perhaps liable to less objec- 

 tion in a work of this kind, than any other or newer 

 system, all of which yet fall short of our own ideas 

 of their correct classification. 



The truest arrangement that has yet been proposed, 

 is that by Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire,* and 

 they place the Sapajous immediately after the Orangs 

 and Gibbons. Another system of arrangement, which 

 would find both its friends and enemies in the ad- 

 vocates and disparagers of the circular or progres- 

 sive series, would be to descend from the Orangs, on the 

 one side of the circle, by the Gibbons, Nasalis, and 

 Colobus, the latter being the only form in the old 

 world with four fingers to the upper extremities, and 

 so far in this respect representing the genus Ateles 

 of the new. We have then the genus Lasiopyga, 

 which combines a great flatness of face to the form of 

 the Guenons which naturally follow, and thence the 



* Journal de Physique. 



