144 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
In the foregoing observations we may perhaps be con- 
sidered as giving too much space to the generalities of 
the subject; an objection to which we can only answer 
that nearly the whole of our knowledge of the Monkey 
tribes consists in generalities. Of the great number of 
species, upwards of one hundred, which are now known 
and characterized, very few are distinguished from their 
immediate fellows by striking and strongly-marked cha- 
racters, either physical or moral. The groups too are 
connected by such gradual and easy transitions, that 
although the typical forms of each, isolated from the 
mass and placed in contrast with each other, unquesti- 
onably exhibit many broadly distinguishing peculiarities, 
yet the entire series offers a chain so nearly complete 
and unbroken as scarcely to admit of being treated of in 
any other way than as one homogeneous whole. 
A no less striking than apposite instance of the close 
affinity between the species, and of the difficulty of dis- 
tinguishing them from each other, especially in their 
young state, is furnished by the animals whose figures 
stand at the head of the present article. They are all 
three very evidently young individuals, and have not 
yet reached the period when it would be safe to pro- 
nounce with positiveness upon the species, or, were we 
to adopt the Cuvierian system in its full extent, upon 
the genera even, to which they respectively belong. 
The specimen from which the central figure was taken 
is in all probability the earlier age of a species of Cer- 
copithecus ; but to which of them it should be referred, 
or whether it belongs to any hitherto characterized spe- 
cies, we may not venture to determine until its characters 
shall have become more fully developed. The distinctive 
