50 SIMIID^. 



opinion. The four examples referable to M. hrunneus that had passed under my 

 observation were all uniformly brown monkeys, and in this respect in strong contrast 

 to the description of the species given by M. Is. Geoff, St.-Hilaire, who charac- 

 terised it as being distinguished " par ses long poils, plusieurs fois ann^les de brun 

 et de roux clair, par I'extreme brievete de sa queue," &c.' Now, these monkeys 

 without trace of annulation I hesitated to regard as the same as Is. Geoffrey's 

 species, more especially as. the person who presented me with the specimens had 

 assured me that the adult was also devoid of annulated fur. On examining the type 

 of M. arctoides in Paris, I found, as I expected, a monkey remarkable for the 

 pronounced annulation of its fur, and in the same case along with it there was 

 a specimen labelled M. hrimneus, uniformly brown — one of the animals that 

 had been forwarded to the Zoological Society of London from Calcutta. The 

 cursory comparison of the two confirmed me in my former view, which I again 

 reiterated.^ But after having again looked at the type of if. melanotus, and the 

 older specimen of M. hrunneus in the British Museum which served to connect 

 the type of the latter in Calcutta with the former monkey, all the diflficulty 

 of grouping these individuals together under one species, M. arctoides, seemed 

 removed. 



I am even disposed to go further and to adopt the view recently promul- 

 gated by that distinguished naturalist and my predecessor the late Mr. Blyth,^ 

 that all these monkeys are referable to the species described by P. Cuvier in 1825 as 

 M. speciosus. It is true that this form was founded merely on a drawing made by 

 Duvaucel of an animal in the zoological collection at the Barrackpore Park, fifteen 

 miles from Calcutta. Temminck, apparently from the circumstance that Cuvier's 

 drawing had a resemblance to the Japan ape, was led to suggest that the Barrackpore 

 individual had also come from Japan and had been taken to Calcutta from some of 

 the entrepots of commerce in Java. There is, however, no evidence to support such 

 a view ; and within the last few years, since my attention has been directed to this 

 subject, four examples of these brown, red-faced, and stump- tailed monkeys have 

 passed under my notice in the Calcutta market, and all of them had come from the 

 Assam region or Cachar. As F. Cuvier's drawing of M. speciosus is a better 

 representation of these monkeys, all of which are referable to M. hrunneus and M. 

 melanotus, than it is of the Japan ape, with its differently coloured fur and rather 

 longer and well-clad tail, so markedly distinct from the tail of Jf, arctoides, it seems 

 highly probable that F. Cuvier's drawing is founded on an animal of the Assam or 

 Cachar region that had probably been presented to the Viceregal collection at 

 Barrackpore by some Government ofiicial — a source from which that menagerie 

 has been frequently enriched, and to which it has always been more or less 

 indebted from its commencement. The second example of M. hrunneus that came 

 into my hands was given to me with the option of presenting it to the Barrackpore 

 collection. 



1 Loc, cit. 2 proc, 2ool. Soc. 1874, p. 652. » Loc. cit. 



