SIMIAD^E. 417 



slender, and vary in number in different species. In H. agilis, H. 

 leuciscus, and H. syndactylus, they consist of thirteen pairs (seven true, 

 six false); in H. Lar, of twelve pairs ; in H. concolor, of four teen pairs. 

 The number of vertebrae in the latter are stated, by Dr. Harlan, as follow : 

 cervical, seven ; dorsal, fourteen ; lumbar, five ; sacral, five; coccygeal, five. 

 Daubenton gives the vertebrae of the H. Lar as, cervical, seven ; dorsal, 

 twelve ; lumbar, six ; sacral, three ; coccygeal, three : he states, also, 

 that the carpus consists of eleven bones, four in the first rank, four in the 

 second, and three supernumerary. 



Though the Greek words, KCIITOS or Kj?/3os (in Latin, cebus or cephus), 

 are, undoubtedly, the origin of the modern terms, Guibon, or Gibbon, we 

 have no reason to believe that they indicated the animals which are now 

 intended.* With respect to the Choromandae and Scyritae, described by 

 Pliny, upon the authority of Tauron and Megasthenes, and which are said 

 to have inhabited India,f we can form but a very superficial judgment: they 

 are called people ; and the last, moreover, are a people among the nomadic 

 Indians, " gentem inter nomados Indos." Other people, also, are noticed; 

 of which the men have their feet a cubit long ; while those of the women are 

 so small that they are called sparrow-footed. The Satyri, mentioned by 

 Pliny, " as dwelling among the tropical mountains of India," and which he 

 describes as being " very swift, going indifferently on all fours or upright, 

 having a human countenance, and not to be captured, unless enfeebled by 

 age or sickness, on account of their velocity," may have reference to some 

 species of Gibbon, of which vague reports had travelled westward : but 

 such passages are matters rather of curiosity than of utility : they prove 

 nothing determinately. 



Though some of the earlier navigators notice the existence of the 

 Gibbon, among whom the first, in point of time, was Marco Polo, a Vene- 

 tian traveller, of the thirteenth century (see Travels of Marco Polo, &c. 

 translated from the Italian, with notes by W. Marsden, F. R. S. London: 

 1818), it is only lately that we have gained a satisfactory knowledge of 

 the animals to which this term, Gibbon, is restricted. 



The first accredited account is that by Buffon ; the fourteenth volume 

 of whose Natural History, in 1766, contains a description of two 

 Gibbons ; namely, the " Grand Gibbon," and the " Petit Gibbon," accom- 

 panied by figures of the animals, and, also, of the skeleton and viscera of 

 the former, which was dissected by Daubenton. This animal, it cannot be 

 doubted, is the Lar of Linnaeus, and the Simia longimana of Schreber. In 

 the fifty-ninth volume of the Philosophical Transactions, for 1769, De 



* Dalechamp, in his notes on Pliny, says that Strabo (lih. xv.) has designated the Cephus by the 

 word KelTror ; and adds : " II me paroit que le Cebus des Grecs, et le Cephus de Pline, qu'on doit pro- 

 noncer Kebus et Kephus, pourroient bien venir originairement de Koph ou Kophin, qui en Hebreu et 

 en Chaldeen est le nom du Singe." 



t Plinii His I. Nat. lib. vii. cap. ii. 

 VOL. 1 . 3 H 



