considered as a zoological Character. 523 



rodential animals. The Cheiromys, consequently, is not in 

 reality so abnormal in the present family as in those with 

 which it has been hitherto associated ; the form of the head 

 and extremities is in all respects the same, and even the organs 

 of mastication are not very dissimilar. Here, then, is the natural 

 situation of this singular being in the scale of animal life, and 

 here, associated with its natural congeners, its apparent ano- 

 malies vanish, and it takes its place as a regular constituent 

 part of a natural and well-defined group. It is only, indeed, 

 the absence of the marsupial character which would make us 

 hesitate to unite the Cheiromys with the Didelphidae ; but 

 this circumstance is so material as to require that it should be 

 placed in a different subfamily. At the same time, its analogy 

 to the Rodentia ought not to be overlooked ; and it is for the 

 purpose of expressing this relation that I propose to deno- 

 minate the small group which I am obliged to form for this 

 animal, Gliridae. I suspect, indeed, that the Cheiromys bears 

 a more intimate relation to the real dormice (Glis) than we 

 are yet aware of.* 



Hitherto, I have intentionally abstained from alluding to 

 the bimanous type of organisation as exemplified in man. It 

 is now necessary to consider that form, and investigate the 

 relations which subsist between the Bimana, Quadrumana, and 

 Pedimana, between all those mammals, in short, which are 

 provided with opposable thumbs, either upon one or both 

 pairs of the extremities. Baron Cuvier, as it is well known, 

 places man in an order by himself, apart from the Simiae and 

 Lemuridae ; but Baron Cuvier knew nothing of the relations 

 here developed, and shown to subsist between the Quadrumana 

 and Pedimana, properly so called ; and, in other respects, the 

 separation in question depends rather upon moral and intel- 

 lectual, than upon physical and zoological, data. The natu- 

 ralist, however, must view man in a different light from the 

 metaphysician and the divine ; anatomical structure and 

 organic conformation are the only principles which the zoolo- 

 gist can admit as the foundations of natural science ; and, in 

 this respect, man is too closely connected with the apes, and 

 other Simiae, to admit of being placed so widely apart from 

 them as he has been in all recent classifications of mammals. 

 I do not mean to affirm that the bimanous form approximates 



* I have not yet seen the Cheiromys, but am inclined to think that it 

 may, after all, belong to the Lemuridae, with which it is associated by 

 Desmarest, and with which it agrees in structure and habitat ; the loss of 

 prehensile power in the fore thumb being but a similar phenomenon to 

 the entire absence of that organ in the Semnopithecus and A'teles. 



Q Q 2 



