signifying originally a small customary payment over and above the freight made to the master of the ship for his care and trouble. It is now generally included in the freight, as an additional percentage. It varies according to the usages of different ports and particular trades.
PRIMATE (from Low Lat. primas = one who held the first place, primas partes). During the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. the title was applied to both secular and ecclesiastical officials. The Theodosian Code mentions primates of towns, districts and fortified places (Primates urbium, vicorum, castellorum). The Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian also mentions primates governing a district, primates regionis; and in this sense the title survived, under Turkish rule, in Greece until the 19th century. An official called “primate of the palace” is mentioned in the laws of the Visigoths. Primas also seems to have been used loosely during the middle ages for “head” or “chief.” Du Cange cites primas castri. The title, however, has been more generally used to denote a bishop with special privileges and powers. It was first employed almost synonymously with metropalitan to denote the chief bishop of a province having his see in the capital and certain rights of superintendence over the whole province. At the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) the metropolitan constitution was assumed as universal, and after this the terms “metropolitan,” and “primate,” to denote the chief bishop of a province, came into general use. The title of primate was used more generally in Africa, while elsewhere metropolitan was more generally employed. The primates in Africa differed from those elsewhere in that the title always belonged to the longest ordained bishop in a province, who had not necessarily his see in the capital, except in the case of the bishop of Carthage, who was head also of the other five African provinces. There were also three sorts of honorary primates: (1) primates aevo, the oldest bishop in a province next to the primate, on whom power devolved when the primate was disabled or disqualified; (2) titular metropolitans, the bishops of certain cities which had the name and title of civil metropoles bestowed on them by some emperor; (3) the bishops of some mother-churches which were honoured by ancient custom but were subject to the ordinary metropolitan, e.g. the bishop of Jerusalem, who was subject to his metropolitan at Caesarea.
At a later date “primate” became the official title of certain metropolitans who obtained from the pope a position of episcopal authority over several other metropolitans and who were, at the same time, appointed vicars of the Holy See. This was done in the case of the bishops of Arles and Thessalonica as early as the 5th century. Such primates were sometimes also called patriarchs, primates diocesearum (political, not episcopal dioceses), primates provinciae, summi primates, praesules omnium sacerdotum in partibus suis. In this sense the Western primate was considered the equivalent of the Eastern patriarch. The archbishop of Reims received the title of primas inter primates. By the False Decretals an attempt was made to establish such a primacy as a permanent institution, but the attempt was not successful and the dignity of primate became more or less honorary. The overlapping of the title is illustrated by the case of England, where the archbishop of York still bears the title of primate of England and the archbishop of Canterbury that of primate of all England. A less general use of the title is its application in medieval usage to the head of a cathedral school or college (primas scholarum) and to the dignitaries of a cathedral church. The abbot of Fulda received from the pope the title of primas inter abbates. In the Episcopal Church of Scotland the senior bishop is styled the primas.
Du Cange, Glossarium; Hinschius, Kirchenrecht (Berlin, 1869); Moeller, History of the Christian Church, translated from the German by Andrew Rutherford, B.D. (London, 1902); Bingham, Origines ecclesiasticae (1840).
PRIMATES (Lat. primus, first), the name given by Linnaeus to the highest order of mammals (see Mammalia), which was taken by him to include not only man, apes, monkeys and lemurs, but likewise bats. The latter group is now separated as a distinct order (see Chiroptera). It has also been proposed to remove from the Primates the lemurs, constituting the group Prosimiae, or Lemuroidea, to form an order by themselves; but general opinion is now against this view, and they are accordingly here regarded as representing a sub-order of Primates, all the other members of which are included in a second subordinal group—the Anthropoidea, or Simiae. Support to the view that lemurs should be included in the order is afforded by the discovery in Madagascar of an extinct species (Nesoithecus) presenting certain characters connecting it with monkeys on the one hand and with lemurs on the other.
In this broader sense the Primates may briefly be defined
as follows. All the members of the order are plantigrade
mammals, normally with five fingers and five toes, which are
generally armed with broad flattened nails, although these are
rarely replaced on single digits, or on all the digits, by claws or
claw-like nails. The dental formula is i.22, c.11, d.22 (33); m.33 (22);
all the teeth in advance of the molars being normally preceded
by milk-teeth. The molars are three-, four- or five-cusped,
but the cusps may in some cases coalesce into transverse
ridges. The thumb and great toe are, as a rule, opposable
to the other digits. The clavicles (collar-bones) are complete;
there is nearly always a free centrale bone in the wrist, or
carpus, in which the scaphoid and lunar are likewise generally
separate. The orbits (and the eyes) are directed more or less
Fig. 1.—Lateral and lower views of
the Skull of a Langur Monkey
(Semnopithecus), to show the forward direction
and complete closure of the orbits,
and the characters of the dentition of
the Old World Catarhini.
forwards, and generally
surrounded by bone (fig. 1),
while the lower jaw has
a vertical movement on
the upper. With a few
exceptions the stomach is
simple; and a duodenojejunal
flexure of the intestine
and a caecum are
present. The diet is generally
vegetable, but may be
mixed, or, rare1y, consisting
of insects. The uterus may
be either bicornuate or
simple; and the placenta
either discoidal and
deciduate, or diffuse and
non-deciduate, with a great
development of the allantois.
The clitoris may or
may not be perforate; the
penis is pendent; and the
testes are extra-abdominal,
situate either in a scrotum
behind the penis or in a
similarly situated fold of
the integument. At most
the teats are four in
number, but generally only
two situated on the breast,
although occasionally
abdominal or even inguinal.
As a rule only a single
offspring is produced at a
birth, such offspring being
always born in a completely helpless condition.
With the exception of man, who has adapted himself to exist in all climates, the Primates are essentially a tropical and subtropical group, although some of the monkeys inhabit districts where the winter climate is severe. The great majority—in fact nearly all—of the members of the order are arboreal in their habits. In size there is great variation, the extremes in this respect being represented by man and the gorilla on the one side, and the marmosets and tarsiers, which are no larger than squirrels, on the other.
As regards the proper meaning of the popular names “monkey,” “baboon” and “ape,” it appears that these are in the main general terms which, with the exception of the second,
