370 BRITISH MAMMALS 



the baboons, the Semnopitheci (or long-tailed entellus monkeys) 

 and the macaques, to have reached India and Tropical Asia. In 

 India, man himself seems to have grown out of an early genus 

 of the anthropoid apes, and from Tropical Asia he went forth 

 to conquer the world and to spread into every habitable portion 

 of the globe. 



In the middle of the Tertiary Epoch monkeys very similar to 

 the macaques and Semnopitheci^ as well as later forms actually 

 identical with the genera Semnopiihecus and Macacus^ lived in large 

 numbers in Southern, Central, and Western Europe, especially in 

 France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Greece. One of these 

 forms {Oreopithecus), a native of Italy, seems to have been in the 

 direct line of man's ascent. It is noteworthy that it possessed no 

 largely developed canine, and that its teeth, like those of man, 

 were without a diastema, or open space separating one tooth from 

 another. A species of Macacus, tentatively called pliocenus^ in- 

 habited England in the early part of the Pleistocene period, and 

 may just possibly have been contemporaneous in the Thames 

 Valley with the first arrivals of Palaeolithic man. This genus 

 Macacus, which is now mainly Asiatic in its range (and which is 

 the only monkey inhabiting north temperate regions with a 

 climate as cold as England), is the only representative of its 

 family still existing in Europe, for one species of macaque 

 inhabits the rock of Gibraltar as well as the adjoining regions of 

 North Africa. Its presence there has been ascribed to the agency 

 of man, but there is every reason to suppose the contrary, 

 especially as its fossil remains are found in Gibraltar caves 

 and elsewhere in Southern Spain. This is possibly identical 

 with the species of macaque that once inhabited Essex, and no 

 doubt other parts of Southern England. 



Family: HOMINID^. MANKIND 



Man agrees with the Old World apes and monkeys in the 

 number and character of his teeth, though he differs from the 

 majority of these allies in never showing any diastema, or open 



