254 STRUCTURE OF HANDS. 



so called, as well also as another race of animals but little 

 known by most people, named Lemurs. These four races, then, 

 Apes, Monkeys, Baboons, and Lemurs, form together what we 

 have termed the Monkey tribe, but what in the language of 

 zoology, is the order Quadrumana, or animals with four hands. 



Nature, however, is not to be tied down by a name, and breaks 

 out into irregularities quite incompatible with the arbitrary dis- 

 tinctions of her expounders. There is no such order as that of 

 four-handed animals. The hand, that marvellous instrument and 

 ready servant of the will, is the possession of man alone. The 

 most highly developed of the so-called " hands " of the Monkeys, 

 those of the Orang and the Chimpanzee, fall immeasurably short, 

 in point of mobility and variety of endowment, of the human 

 hand, of which Sir Charles Bell has written so eloquently ; while, 

 in one large section of the Monkey tribe, the opposable thumb is 

 entirely absent from the fore pair of limbs. The extremities of 

 the whole tribe are rather to be regarded as more or less perfectly 

 formed grasping feet, instead of hands, and, in accordance with 

 this view, the term Cheiropoda, or hand-footed, has been pro- 

 posed as a more appropriate designation for the order than that 

 by which it is now distinguished. But the terminology of 

 science once agreed upon, is like the laws of the Mcdcs and Per- 

 sians, unalterable ; and, remembering that the term is used witli 

 a licence, we must still speak of the whole Monkey tribe as the 

 Quadrumana. 



Apes stand at the head of their order, and on the "development " 

 principle are to be regarded of course as our own immediate 

 zoological progenitors. And there are these weighty arguments 

 in favour of the doctrine, that, like ourselves, the Apes have no 

 tails ; they can walk almost erect, are addicted to the use of 

 walking-sticks ; and, though amiable and docile enough in youth, 

 are apt to become excessively crusty and perverse in old age. If 

 this be not enough to convince the reader that his remote an- 

 cestors were indubitable Apes, he had better read Mr. Darwin's 

 " Origin of Species," where he will find that the transformation 

 of a Monkey into a man is a mere nothing to the wonders that 

 can be brought about by " natural selection " in the " struggle 

 for existence." Geographically, the Apes have their head-quarters 

 in the extreme south of Asia the peninsula of Malacca, and the 

 great islands of the Indian Ocean ; though two of their number 



