518 WILD ANIMALS. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



ANTHEOPOID APES {SIMIAD^). 



The terms ape, baboon, and monkey, used frequently to be em- 

 ployed indiscriminately to designate the same animals, and are 

 still given this wide application by many people not conversant 

 with the nature of the distinctions. Ape, however, should only 

 be applied to certain members of the family that are tailless, and 

 have no cheek-pouches; baboon, to those frightfully-ugly, dog-faced 

 animals with only a short tail, and to which the generic name 

 Gynocephalus has been given ; and the word monkey should be 

 reserved for the numerous varieties that have cheek-pouches and 

 long tails, prehensUe or not prehensile. This classification is 

 the one adopted by Eay forty or fifty years ago, and although, 

 doubtless, somewhat vague, for there are many exceptional in- 

 stances in which it does not hold good, still for general principles 

 it is continued, modern naturalists not having universally adopted 

 any other to supersede it, although several have been suggested, 

 founded either on the geographical division of the animals or the 

 position and construction of their nostrils. 



In Natural History, these animals belong to the highest order. 

 Primates, which is the one that contains man. It embraces such 

 a large number of different species that it has been split up into 

 many sub-divisions, sub-orders, sub-families, and genera. Although 

 it is not within the scope of this work to particularize all these 

 sub-divisions, yet it is necessary to state that the first is called 

 Anthropoidea, and contains three families — Hominadce, that is, man 

 or the human race ; Simiadce, or the apes of the old world ; and 

 Cehidce, those of the new world. 



Cuvier gave the name Quadrumana to the monkey family, a 

 word signifying four-handed, because they can to some extent 



