HEAD AND SHOULDERS OF THE TALAPOIN.
This is a rather rare animal, and comes from the west coast of Africa, having been sent to Europe from the Gaboon. It is a pretty little creature (probably the smallest of these Monkeys), and is extremely gentle and intelligent. The skin is green, and the lower part of the body and the under part of the limbs are white. It has large ears, a black nose, and it has a kind of broad “brutus” on the forehead.
There are some very interesting points about this little thing, which, in nearly all its construction, is like the rest of the Cercopitheci, or Guenons, but it has a large brain, a short muzzle, a thick, long partition in its nose, and only three points, or cusps, instead of four, on its last lower hind grinders.
So far as is known, there are no differences between the habits of this little Monkey and the others from the west coast of Africa, and therefore its intelligence and deficiencies are sufficiently incomprehensible; but they exhibit a fact of great importance, of which a hint was given in the conclusion of the description of the Mona Monkey. In the Talapoin, the last lower grinder differs from that of all Monkeys by the absence of an important part of its usual structure, and in the Mona the great air sac, which is in communication with the windpipe in most other Monkeys, is absent. This fact may be stated as follows:—That in animals closely resembling others of their group or genus material deficiencies in construction suddenly appear. Corresponding to these deficiencies are the absence of all or a great part of tail in genera the majority of whose species have a tail, and the inference to be drawn is that, notwithstanding all the members or species of a genus are related by a common ancestry, the descendants of a well-marked stock may exhibit peculiarities of structure which are not produced by alterations in the habits or surroundings of the animals.
Such peculiar structures often relate to a remote ancestor, and it is remarkable that in the case of this Talapoin they give it a very faint resemblance to the American Monkeys.
Some naturalists separate the Talapoin from the genus, and classify it in one of its own under the title Myiopithecus.
The third group of the Guenons is represented by the well-known Monkey called
THE GREEN MONKEY.[44]
It has its classical name from two words which mean beauty and hair (κάλλος and θρίξ-τρίχος), and it must not be confounded with the Callitricha of Buffon, which is the same as the Grivet Monkey whose figure was drawn by the Egyptians.
