Z MACACUS. 



highly organized than a Bear or a Bat, in the fossiliferous 

 strata which formed the theatre of animal life anterior to 

 the record of the Human Kace. Not a bone, not a tooth of 

 an Ape, Monkey, or Lemur, had ever presented themselves 

 to his notice during the long period of his researches ; * 

 whence it came to be generally believed that the QUAD- 

 RUMANA, or those Mammals which most nearly resemble 

 Man in their organization, were scarcely, if at all, anterior to 

 the Human Species in the order of Creation. Mr. Lyell, 

 however, in 1830,-f had remarked, that the evidence of the 

 total absence of the Anthropomorphous tribes was inconclu- 

 sive. He rightly stated that the bones of quadrupeds met 

 with in tertiary deposits, were chiefly those which frequent 

 marshes, rivers, or the borders of lakes ; as the Elephant, 

 Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Tapir, the Ox, &c., while the 

 species which live in trees were extremely rare ; that we 

 had, as yet, no data for determining how great a number 

 of the one kind we ought to find, before we had a right to 

 expect a single individual of the other. And this distin- 

 guished Geologist concluded by the remarkable anticipatory 

 observation that, " if we are led to infer from the presence 

 of Crocodiles and Turtles in the London Clay, and from the 

 Cocoa Nuts and Spices found in the Isle of Sheppy, that at 

 the period when our older tertiary strata were formed, the 

 climate was hot enough for the Quadrumanous tribe ; we, 

 nevertheless, could not hope to discover any of their skele- 

 tons until we had made considerable progress in ascertain- 

 ing what were the contemporaneous Pachydermata," not 

 one of which at the period when the foregoing passage was 



* " Aucun os, aucune dent de Singe ni de Maki se sont jamais presented a moi 

 dans mes longues recherches." Cuvier, Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe, 

 p. 159. 



t Principles of Geology. First edition, 1830, vol. i. p. 152. 



