MONKEYS. 33 



those formed in lakes or in caverns. In the former the bodies of large 

 numbers of terrestrial animals were annually deposited, owing to their 

 having been caught by floods in the tributary streams, swallowed up 

 iu marginal bogs or quicksands, or drowned by the giving way of ice. 

 Caverns were the haunts of hyenas, tigers, bears, and other beasts of 

 prey, which dragged into them the bodies of their victims, and left 

 many of their bones to become imbedded in stalagmite or in the mud- 

 dy deposit left by floods, while herbivorous animals were often carried 

 into them by these floods, or by falling down the swallow-holes which 

 often open into caverns from above. But, owing to their arboreal 

 habits, monkeys were to a great extent freed from all these dangers. 

 Whether devoured by beasts or birds of prey, or dying a natural death, 

 their bones would usually be left on dry land, where they would 

 slowly decay under atmospheric influences. Only under very excep- 

 tional circumstances would they become imbedded in aqueous de- 

 posits ; and, instead of being surprised at their rarity, we should rather 

 wonder that so many have been discovered in a fossil state. 



Monkeys, as a whole, form a very isolated group, having no near 

 relations to any other mammalia. This is undoubtedly an indication 

 of great antiquity. The peculiar type which has since reached so high 

 a development must have branched off the great mammalian stock at 

 a very remote epoch, certainly far back in the Secondary period, since 

 in the Eocene we find lemurs and lemurine monkeys already special- 

 ized. At this remoter period they were probably not separable from 

 the insectivora, or (perhaps) from the ancestral marsupials. Even now 

 we have one living form, the curious Galeopithecus, or flying lemur, 

 which has only recently been separated from the lemurs, with which 

 it was formerly united, to be classed as one of the insectivora ; and it 

 is only among the opossums and some other marsupials that we again 

 find hand-like feet with opposable thumbs, which are such a curious 

 and constant feature of the monkey-tribe. 



This relationship to the lowest of the mammalian tribes seems in- 

 consistent with the place usually accorded to these animals at the head 

 of the entire mammalian series, and opens up the question whether 

 this is a real superiority or whether it depends merely on the obvious 

 relationship to ourselves. If we could suppose a being gifted with 

 high intelligence, but with a form totally unlike that of man, to have 

 visited the earth before man existed in order to study the various 

 forms of animal life that were found there, we can hardly think he 

 would have placed the monkey-tribe so high as we do. He would ob- 

 serve that their whole organization was specially adapted to an arbo- 

 real life, and this specialization would be rather against their claiming 

 the first rank among terrestrial creatures. Neither in size, nor 

 strength, nor beauty, would they compare with many other forms, 

 while in intelligence they would not surpass, even if they equaled, the 

 horse or the beaver. The carnivora, as a whole, would certainly be 



VOL. XXI. 3 



