CHAP. xxiv. FOSSIL, ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECIES. 499 



naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and arma- 

 dilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the 

 American type, and, therefore, widely departing in their den 

 tition and some other characters from the Primates of the old 

 world.* 



At some future day, when many hundred species of extinct 

 quadrumana may have been brought to light, the naturalist 

 may speculate with advantage on this subject ; at present we 

 must be content to wait patiently, and not to allow our judge 

 ment respecting transmutation to be influenced by the want 

 of evidence, which it would be contrary to analogy to look 

 for in post- pliocene deposits in any districts, which as yet we 

 have carefully examined. For, as we meet with extinct 

 kangaroos and wombats in Australia, extinct llamas and 

 sloths in South America, so in equatorial Africa, and in 

 certain islands of the East Indian Archipelago, may we hope 

 to meet hereafter with lost types of the anthropoid Primates, 

 allied to the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang. 



Europe, during the pliocene period, seems not to have 

 enjoyed a climate fitting it to be the habitation of the quad- 

 rumanous mammalia ; but we no sooner carry back our re 

 searches into miocene times, where plants and insects, like 

 those of Oeninghen, and shells, like those of the faluns of the 

 Loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and 

 land, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north 

 of the Alps and Pyrenees. Among the few species already 

 detected, two at least belong to the anthropomorphous class. 

 One of these, the Dryopithecus of Lartet, a gibbon or long- 

 armed ape, about equal to man in stature, was obtained in the 

 year 1856 in the upper miocene strata at Sansan, near the 

 foot of the Pyrenees in the South of France, and one bone 

 of the same ape is reported to have been since procured from 



* See above, p. 479. 



K K 2 



