MONKEYS ARE QUADRUMANOUS. 137 



Ail the simiae possess hands ; but the most distinguish- 

 ing part, the thumb, is slender, short, and weak, even in the 

 most anthropo-morphous * : regarded as an imitation of 

 the human structure, it would almost justify the term ap- 

 plied to it by EusTACHius — ' ridiculous/ The other fingers 

 are elongated and slender f. 



Some animals, which have fingers sufficiently long and 

 moveable for seizing and grasping objects, are obliged, by 

 the want of a separate thumb, to hold them by means of 

 the two fore-paws ; as the squirrel, rat, opossum, &c. Those 

 which are moreover obliged to rest their fore-feet on the 

 ground, as the dog and cat, can only hold objects by fixing 

 them between the paw and the ground. Lastly, such as 

 have the fingers united by integuments, or inclosed in 

 hoofs, lose all power of prehension. 



The comparison, which 1 have already drawn between 

 the construction of the hand and foot, having shewn that 

 the latter is merely calculated for support in man, we may 

 state that he is two-handed and two-footed, or bimanous 

 and biped. 



Monkeys, apes, and other anthropo-morphous animals, 

 can, in fact, be called neither bipeds nor quadrupeds ; but 

 they are quadrumanous or fore-handed J. They have op- 

 posable thumbs on the lower as well as upper extremities ; 

 and thus their feet are instruments of prehension as well as 

 their hands. 



By a thumb we mean a member not placed in a direction 

 parallel to the fingers, but standing off from them laterally, 

 enjoying separate motion, and therefore capable of being 



* The thumb of the orang-utang and chimpansd, besides being much 

 smaller than the fingers, reaches only to the metacarpo-digital joint. Cam- 

 per aHuvres, pi. 2. fig. 5. F. Cuvier in the Annales du Museum^ t. 16. p. 4. 

 Tyson, p. 12. fig. 5. " 



t Simiae in general have nine bones in the carpus : and Camper found the 

 ninth bone in the orang-utang ; it was a sesamoid bone in the tendon of the 

 abductor longus pollicis. (Euvres, 1 4:3. He found in the same animal a 

 large sesamoid bone in the tendon of the popliteus : ibid. 133. 



t Aristotle observed that the feet of monkeys resemble hands ; and Tyson, 

 in describing the foot of the chimpans^ (S. troglodytes) says, " But this part. 



