Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/687

Rh of money. In this way be secured a number of birds and mammals, of species that one would not have expected to find in that country.

Among the interesting types discovered in Moupin, we must assign the preëminence to a monkey with long hair and retroussé nose, which Alphonse Milne-Edwards has described and figured under the name of Rhinopithecus Roxellanæ. This species inhabits the mountains in the western portion of Moupin, as also the district of Yaotchy, and as far as Kokonor. Thus it lives in a region where snow remains on the ground during more than six months in the year. According to the hunters, these monkeys are found in the woods, and always in large troops. Usually, they remain on the tops of lofty trees, and feed on the fruit and young shoots of the wild-bamboo. In possessing no cheek-pouches for stowing away food, and in having one tubercle only on the last molar tooth of the lower jaw, they resemble the Semnopitheci; but yet they cannot be classed in the same genus, since, both in anatomical structure and in external aspect, the Moupin monkey presents certain peculiarities which entitle it to a special position among simians. Thus, in the Semnopitheci, for instance in the simpai, the entellus, and the budeng, or negro-monkey, the limbs are disproportionately long as compared with the body; the thumb of the anterior hands is short and situated very far back; the tail is long and slender; while in the Moupin monkey the limbs are short and very muscular, the body very strongly built, the tail tufted and shorter in proportion than in the entellus. Besides these, there exist several other characteristics which fully justify the making of a new genus for this Moupin monkey. Thus, the anterior and posterior limbs present no considerable disproportion, as is the case with many of the Semnopitheci; the upper arm-bone is very long, longer than the forearm, and its circumference is much increased in its articular portion; the radius (one of the bones of the forearm) presents a strong curvature, with its convexity turned forward, the result being that the interosseous space acquires an exceptionally large size; the hand is large and thick, instead of being long and slender, as in the simpai; but the thumb is quite as rudimentary as in the latter species, and its terminal joint barely extends below the extremity of the first metacarpal bone. The bones of the rest of the fingers are very much bent, which enable the hand to grasp a branch very firmly. The thigh-bone is stout and longer than the large bone of the leg. Finally, the finger-bones of the posterior hands (feet) are short and bowed, which circumstance gives to the palm the form of an arch, and the thumb, instead of being almost atrophied, as in the anterior hands, reaches to the extremity of the first phalange of the index-finger.

The conformation of the head indicates an animal of higher intelligence than the macaques and the Seminopitheci. Thus the face is but weakly prognathous; or, in other words, the lower jaw, compared