CHAPTER XIV 
THE ORDER PRIMATES 
TuIs order in the system of Linnzus includes Man, the Monkeys, 
the Lemurs, and the Bats. By common consent of all zoologists 
the last-named animals have been removed into a distinct order ; 
but with regard to the association of the others there has been, 
and still is, much difference of opinion. 
That all the Monkeys, from the highest Anthropoid Apes to 
the lowest Marmosets, form a natural and tolerably homogeneous 
group seems never to have been questioned; but whether the 
Lemurs on the one hand and Man on the other should be united 
with them in the same order are points of controversy. If, in 
accordance with the traditional views of zoologists, the former are 
still considered to be members of this order, they must form a sub- 
order apart from all the others, with which they have really very 
little in common except the opposable hallux of the hind foot, a 
character also met with in the Opossums, and which is therefore of 
very secondary importance.! 
Using the term Primates in this wider sense it is not easy to 
give any precise definition of the order. The dentition is diphy- 
odont and heterodont ; the number of incisors being very generally 
3, and that of the molars, with the exception of the Hapalide, 
being 3. The cheek-teeth are adapted for grinding, the molars 
being more complex than the premolars, and usually having four 
main tubercles, which may be either subconical or more or less 
compressed. The orbit is invariably surrounded by a ring of bone; 
1 For the arguments in favour of placing the Lemurs in a separate order 
see Milne-Edwards, ‘‘Observations sur quelques points de l’embryologie des 
Lemuriens et sur les affinités zoologiques de ces animaux,” in the Azz. des 
Sciences Nat. October 1871; and P. Gervais, ‘‘Encephale des Lemures,” in 
Journ, de Zoologie, tom. i. p. 7. For those for retaining them among the 
Primates, see Mivart, ‘‘On Lepilemur and Chirogaleus, and on the Zoological 
Rank of the Lemuroidea,” in Proc. Zool. Soc, 1878, p. 484. 
