Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/346

 furred and long-haired apes, apes with excessively long tails, and apes with rudimentary tails. The second American family, the Marmosets, have thirty-two teeth, like the Old World monkeys and man; but this identity of number arises from one of the true molars being absent; the Marmosets have three premolar teeth, like the Cebidæ, and are therefore quite as far removed as the Cebidæ from all the forms of the Old World. They are, moreover, a low type of apes, having a smooth brain, and claws instead of nails, although they are gentle and playful in disposition, and have a visage which presents an open facial angle.

The Old World apes, as just observed, are far more diversified amongst themselves, than are those of the New World. They form, in the first place, two widely distinct groups or sub-orders, Pithecidæ and Lemurs, and comprise about 125 species, divided into twenty-one genera. The Lemur group contains a remarkably great diversity of forms; this is shown by their being naturally divisible into four families, and twelve genera, although containing only twenty-five species. Their teeth are very irregular in number and position, but never correspond with those of the Pithecidæ or Cebidæ. These four families, in structure, are more widely separated from each other than are the two American groups of the same denomination. The Lemurs also contain a number of anomalous or isolated forms, which, by their teeth, number of teats, and other features, connect the monkeys with other and lower orders of the mammal class; namely, the Rodents, the