PAPIO ANUBIS. 
37 
baboons, or rather, it may be said, that having forgotten the essential characters of the 
latter, he considered them to be the same as the former, an error which has led to 
endless confusion. He therefore abandoned the idea that C. anuhis was an 
Abyssinian and Nubian baboon, and assigned it to Western Africa, ascribing C. thoth 
to these two foregoing areas, where, however, it is not found, unless it be in the very 
southern extremity of Abyssinia. Zoologists who followed him, misled also by 
Riippell’s first erroneous identification of his Abyssinian baboons with C. babuin^ 
which he stated occurred in Dongola, Sennaar, and Abyssinia, and further recognizing in 
the C. tlwth, Ogilby, the ‘ Le Babouin,’ F. Cuvier, commonly enumerated this latter 
species among the animals of the Nile Valley and Abyssinia \ whereas in reality the 
species inhabiting these countries was C. anubis, the Papio anubis of this work. 
Baboons presenting the somewhat vaguely-defined character of C. anubis indicated 
by F. Cuvier are also found in Western Africa, and many individuals have now and 
again been mentioned in scientific literature under that name, the term usually applied 
to them in museums. Although F. Cuvier’s description, in the present state of our 
knowledge, may fail in definiteness, yet, on the other hand, it is supplemented by the 
figure, Avhich on the whole agrees well with the baboon of the Nile Valley, if due 
allowance be made for individual differences and the changes which occur with growth. 
Is. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, in dealing with the baboons of Western Africa, closely allied 
to the Nile species in all their leading features, experienced so much difficulty in 
attempting to identify them with F. Cuvier’s figure and description, that he indicated 
them under a new name, applying to this West-African form the term olivaceus; but, 
from what he stated in a footnote 2 , it was quite evident that he was not convinced of 
their really being specifically distinct. Unfortunately after all these years the material 
at present available is not sufficient for the settlement of this question. After a 
careful inspection of all the specimens of baboons in any way referable to P. anubis^ 
existing in the Museums of Berlin, Frankfort-on-the-Main, London, Paris, Stuttgart, 
and a much more cursory examination of those in the Museum of Leyden, the con¬ 
clusion is pressed home that the species of baboon presenting the general characters 
assigned to the Anubis by F. Cuvier is spread across Africa to the south of the region 
distinguished by the practical absence of periodical rains, from about 38° or 39° East 
longitude to the Atlantic. 
In the east, the area of periodical rains practically ceases at 19° N. lat., but to 
the west it contracts and expands in its course, depending on the physical characters 
of the region embraced within the 19th parallel. 
The southern range of baboons conforming to P. anubis is practically unknown, 
but they appear to spread from Abyssinia and the Nile Valley as far as the region of 
1 Cf. Schlegel, Mem. d’Hist. Nat. des Pays-Bas, vii. 1876, p. 128. 
2 Cat. Meth. des Mammif. 1851, p. 34. 
