336 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



parent justice, as forming an intermediate link between 

 the apes and baboons. From the first it differs by the 

 elongation of the muzzle, and the size of the canine teeth ; 

 from the second, by possessing only the rudiments of a tail. 

 Still the main points of its conformation and character ap- 

 proximate more to those of the baboons, and fully justify 

 Cuvier in placing it among them, though at the head of 

 that family. 



All the animals of which we have hitherto been speaking 

 in this memoir, the Count de Buffon presents to his read- 

 ers in the following order. The Orang Outang, or Pongo, 

 is the first ape ; the Pithecus, the second ; the Gibbon, the 

 third ape, but deformed; the Magot, which he also calls 

 Cynocephalus, is either the fourth ape, or first baboon. 

 The Papio, first baboon; the Mandrill, second baboon, and 

 the Ouanderou, the third. And this order, he tells us, is 

 neither arbitrary nor fictitious, but founded on the gra- 

 duated scale of nature herself. 



After the apes and baboons come, according to the natu- 

 ralist whose system we are now explaining, the Guenons. 

 This term, a word of the old French idiom, is used by the 

 Count and others to signify such animals as resemble apes 

 and baboons, but which have tails as long or longer than 

 the body. In popular usage, this French term is employed 

 to distinguish all the smaller monkeys, while the word Singe 

 is applied to the larger. It was also used to designate the 

 female of the ape kind. But more anciently in French the 

 words Singes or Magots were used to signify the tail-less 

 monkeys, while Guenon or Mone was the generic name for 

 such as had long tails. This word Guenon, may, perhaps, 

 be derived from the Kebos or Kepos of the Greeks, as well 

 as the word Gibbon. These Guenons are distinguished 

 from the apes and baboons by inferiority of strength and 

 size, and length of tail, and from the makis or lemurs, by the 

 absence of the pointed muzzle, and their having but four 



