60 
THE MAMMALS OF EGYPT. 
the probability is that it was carried from the Zanzibar coast by some ship trading 
direct with Bombay. Ogilby’s allocation of this baboon to Abyssinia has been produc¬ 
tive of great confusion. After its death the specimen passed into the Museum of the 
Zoological Society, London, and subsequently, in 1855, it was made over to the British 
Museum, where it is still preserved. At present it has no great resemblance to the 
figure given of it in Fraser’s ‘ Zoologia Typica,’ either in its coloration or in its general 
appearance. It is much paler, and its form is more slender and its limbs longer, 
characters which Ogilby held were distinctive of C. babuin and in marked contrast to 
the massive thick-set form of his C. thoth. Whatever may have been the original 
characters of this baboon, which Ogilby now in his turn held was the species worshipped 
by the ancient Egyptians, to the exclusion of F. hamadryas, Linn., the claims of which 
to this distinction had been ably advocated by Ehrenberg \ the specimen now 
professing to be the type of C. thoth is unquestionably identical with the ‘Babouin,’ 
for Avhich F. Cuvier was the first to claim the honour of its having been sacred to 
the deity Thoth. Ogilby allowed that his C. thoth had the same bright silvery-grey 
whiskers and under parts of the body as in his so-called C. sj)hinx, but that the upper 
colours were more obscure, the bright yellowish green being replaced by sordid dunnish 
brown. These are the colour-diiferences which are met with in the examples of 
P. cynocephalus at different ages, and are modified in different localities. The fact that 
Ogilby’s type was characterized by him as differing entirely from C. babum {F. cyno- 
cephalus) by its massive thick-set form is not of much importance, and does not affect 
the question of the specific identity of the two, because it is perfectly explained by the 
complete deterioration of the skeleton by a life of confinement. Ogilby describes the 
type as an old male of great size, but the greatly diseased skull has the basioccipital 
suture intact, and from the relations of the last upper molar to the surrounding parts 
it is quite evident that the animal was not completely mature. Unsuitable food and 
absence of exercise are two conditions quite sufficient to account for the spongy 
swollen condition of the bones of the skull, also for the widely separated temporal 
ridges and the obliteration of all the salient features distinctive of the skull of an 
animal living a life of freedom in its own wilds. The foregoing conditions also amply 
account for the thick-set character of the animal in life, a feature, however, which has 
not been preserved in it as a museum specimen. 
Is. Geoffrey St.-Flilaire, writing in 1843 held that it was entirely wrong to admit 
the identity of the Cercopitheens cynocephalus ex viridescentibus of Brisson with the 
Babouin, on the ground that the name Cercopithecus cynocephalus was not for that 
writer a specific, but a generic denomination. Cercopithecus cynocephalus constituted 
1 Abhandl. k. Akad. Berlin, 1833, Plij’s. Kl. p. 33/. 
2 Arch, du Mus. ii. 1841, p. 579, pi. 34. This volume, from internal evidence, appeared after the C. E. 
vol. XV. for 1842, and according to Is. Geoffr. St.-Hilaire, Cat. Method. 1851, p. 21, not until 1843. 
