MONKEYS OF THE OLD WORLD. 345 



radius (the two bones constituting the fore-arm), the radius is the 

 stoutest, a condition the reverse of that which obtains in the human skele- 

 ton. This inferiority of the ulna is carried through all the Quadrumana, 

 till, in the Galeopithecus, its humeral extremity alone is free, being con- 

 tinued from the olecranon, a feeble slender bone, soon anchylosing with 

 the radius, into which it ultimately merges, to the restriction of the 

 power of the rotatory motion, which, in the Monkeys, that bone so 

 eminently possesses. 



The fore-hands are narrow and elongated ; and the palm is flat, 

 instead of being gently concave, as in Man. The carpal bones occupy 

 but little space, and consist of nine, instead of eight, as in the human 

 subject, owing to a division of the os trapezoides. The metacarpal 

 bones are long ; that supporting the fore-finger is the longest ; whence 

 they gradually decline to that of the little finger. The metacarpal bone 

 of the thumb is not much more than half the length of that of the first 

 finger ; and the phalanges, added to it, scarcely make the thumb pass 

 beyond the first finger's basal joint . but, in this respect, there is 

 some variation. In the Macaques and the Baboons, the fingers are 

 shorter, and the thumb is better fashioned, than in most of the long- 

 tailed Monkeys, and especially those from India. The independent 

 action of the fingers is much more restricted than in Man: it has 

 been said, that none have the power of dividing the fingers from each 

 other ; but this is not universally the case : the power, however, is too 

 limited to increase, in any important degree, the capability of the hands 

 to serve as mechanical instruments. The lower limbs differ, both in their 

 osseous and in their muscular structure, from their analogues in the 

 human subject, far more than the arms. Professor Owen has well 

 remarked, in speaking of the Orang, that " no anatomist can contemplate 

 the lower extremity of a quadrumanous animal, or experience the 

 degree of mobility, of which the several parts of it are susceptible in 

 the living or undissected body, without being prepared to find cor- 

 responding modifications of the muscular system, and consequent devi- 

 ations from the structure of these parts as they exist in Man." Varying 

 in length and muscular development, in different genera, the lower limbs 

 never equal, much less exceed, the arms, as in Man. In the Orang, they are 

 very disproportionate, and are the same, also, in the Gibbons. In other 

 Monkeys, the proportion between the fore and hind limbs is not so con- 

 siderable. The admeasurements of these parts, in a skeleton purposely 

 examined, are as follow : Humerus, seven inches and three quarters ; 

 femur, from the top of the trochanter to the lower end, seven inches and a 

 quarter; radius, eight inches and three quarters; tibia, six inches and 

 a quarter. 



In the Macaques, and the Baboons more especially, the proportions 



VOL. I. 2 Y 



