CHAP. XXIV. FOSSIL ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECIES. 499 



Danish naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and 

 armadillos, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of 

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

 dentition 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 judg- 

 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 kan- 

 garoos and wombats in Australia, extinct llamas and sloths 

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

 islands of the East Indian Archij)elago, 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 anthropomor- 

 phous 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 



* See above, p. 479. 



