73 



CHAPTER IX. 



MONKEYS EXTIA'CT AND LIVING. 



The kind and extent of tlie distinction between Man and the higher Apes, has formed the 

 subject of much discussion of late years, especially iipon some premises laid down by Professor 

 Owen. The Professor, while admitting that the distinction between ilan and the Apes could 

 not be considered as "other than a difference in degree," maintains that the difference in degree 

 is so great that Man must form a separate and independent section of equal importance to the other 

 great sub-classes into which zoologists have divided the animal kingdom. In support of this he 

 adduced certain anatomical peculiarities M'hich he thought he had discovered in the brain of Man, 

 sufficient to distinguish it in characler from that of the nearest Apes.* His views have been 

 controverted by Professor Huxley f and other eminent zoologists ; and the general verdict of anato- 

 mists would seem to be that the difTorcnces mentioned by Owen either do not exist or are not 

 of the importance he supposed, and consequently that the distinction io not well founded, so far 

 as it rests on them ; and Professor Huxley has, I think, satisfactorily shown that Man (considered 

 purely as an animal, which is all that the zoologist has to do with) cannot be regarded as more 

 widely separated from the Apes, than the different families of them are from each other. 



The first quadrumanous fossil which has been discovered was foimd in the Himmalayahs by 

 Lieuts. Baker and Dm-and in 1830.* It has proved to belong, like subsequently discovered quadru- 

 manous fossils in the same district (the Sewalik (Miocene) tertiaries), to the Indian genus Semnopi- 

 THECus. The next discovery was made by William Colchester, in 1839, in a bed of whitish sand, 

 beneath a stratum of tenacious blue clay situated by the side of the river Debcn, about a mile 

 from "Woodbridge in the parish of Kingston, in Suffolk. This deposit is referred by all geologists 

 to the eocene period, and the fossils were determined by Professor Owen to belong to a genus 

 of Monkeys which he called Eopithecus, and which had its nearest affinities with Macacus. Since 

 then, however, he has (1862) retracted this opinion, and with more ample materials at his command 

 has pronoimced it to belong to the genus Hyracotherium, an animal allied to the Pae^eotherium. 

 This is a very important correction, for " there is now no eocene iMonkey known to palscontologists, 

 unless M. Riitimeyer is right in referring to this family a small fragment of a jaw with three molar 

 teeth foimd in the upper eocene strata of the Swiss Jura."§ 



* OwiTN, on "The Characters, Principles of Division, t Fi>r an account of the various discoveries of the 



and Primary Groups of the Class Manunaliau." In " Linn. fossil remains of Jlonkeys, see a paper by Prof. Owen on 



Soc. Proc." 1857. the Gorilla in "Proc. Zool. Soc," 1859, p. 18. 



t HnxLEY in "Nat. Hist. Rev." Jan. 1861, ct seq., § " Elements of Geology." By Sir Charlis Lyell. Sixth 



and "Evidences a.s to the Man's place in Nature." Py Edition, London, 1805. p. 292. 

 TnoMAs IIexry Huxley. London, 1803. 



