Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/849

Rh the Old Continent. We have removed the galeopitheci from the lemurs on account of the absence of the first character. Must we also remove the arctopitheci from the monkeys? Let us look at their characteristics. When we take hold of their skull in such a way as to hide the lower part of the face, they look exactly like American monkeys. Like the American monkeys, they have a round head, flat face, lateral nostrils, no gluteal callosities, no pouches. But they have not opposable thumbs, either in the fore or hind limbs, and this deprives them of the single characteristic common to all the monkeys and false monkeys. Further, they have claws on all the fingers, except on the hind-thumbs, which alone have nails. They have thirty-two teeth, the same number as the monkeys of the Old Continent and man, but with a different formula—one little molar more and one large molar less. Further, their teeth have some insectivorous characters; the lower canine is small, the molars work a little into one another like those of insectivora, and some, the forward ones, have sharp, conical points. The lower incisors of some species are pointed. Cuvier hesitated to put them among the quadrumana. For our own part, we readily see in them a step toward the primates, a kind of American lemur, a transition from the insectivora to the monkeys of the New Continent.

Fossil monkeys have been found in America, and it is remarkable that they all have thirty-six teeth, and relate themselves to the types of that continent as if the platyrrhinians had always lived there. The highest among them is the Laopithecus, which can be compared to the anthropoids of the eastern continent. In short, we are introduced in America to a special series, constituted, from its origin to its end, thus: Some insectivora; arctopitheci; nocturnal monkeys, beginning with the saimiris; diurnal monkeys; Laopithecus. MM. Vogt, Schmidt, and Cope accept this insectivorous origin.

The monkeys of the old continent are less tree-dwelling than those of the new continent, and are all diurnal. Most of them have pouches and gluteal callosities. Their teeth are generally less omnivorous than those of man, and tend, especially by the canines, to the carnivorous type, and are also less continuous. They are divided into the great monkeys, tailless monkeys or anthropoids, and tailed monkeys, which are again divided into semnopitheci, cercopitheci, and cynocephaluses. The semnopitheci (from σεμνός, venerable) include the entellus, the sacred monkey of India, a prominent figure in the Aryan legends, and the colobus of Abyssinia and Guinea. The cercopitheci include the guenon, which is found only in Africa; the magot, which lives in Africa and as far north as the rock of Gibraltar; and the macacus, which occurs in India and Japan. The cynocephaluses are large