356 QUADRUMANA. 



a form allied to the group of American Monkeys termed Sapajous ; but 

 these extinct species were, as their reliquia prove, more than double the 

 size of any of this group existing in the present day. The fragments 

 in question were, with those of other animals, imbedded in a red earth, at 

 the bottom of a series of caverns, hollowed out in a secondary calcareous 

 deposit. To the larger of the animals, which must have exceeded four 

 feet in height, he gives the name of Protopithecus Brasiliensis, regarding 

 it as the type of a distinct genus ; to the other, that of Callithrix 

 primsevus. 



It is not, however, only on the continents of Europe, or in Asia and 

 America, that quadrumanous relics have occurred : geologists have been 

 surprised and interested by the discovery of the fossil remains of extinct 

 Monkeys found in some of the series of tertiary deposits of our 



own island. The first example is that of 

 249 



the last molar teeth, and a portion of 



the lower jaw, as seen in the annexed 

 sketches (fig/ 249) of a Macaque, which, 

 with the teeth of sharks, were found, in 

 1827, by Mr. Colchester, in a deep layer 

 of whitish sand, beneath a stratum of blue 

 clay, on the banks of the river Deben, 

 at Kingston, near Woodbridge, in Suffolk. 

 The clay was used for the purpose of 

 making bricks ; and it was from the pit 



whence the clay was taken, that the relic in question was obtained. 

 This bed of tenacious clay is in many places overlaid by crag, and is 

 continued over a great portion of the eastern side of the county of Suf- 

 folk, but is itself destitute of fossils ; and, as Mr. Charlesworth considers, 

 may be assigned, without hesitation, to the age of the London clay. (See 

 Mag. Nat. Hist. 1839, p. 448.) The bed of sand, according to this 

 geologist's opinion, probably intervenes between the clay and the chalk. 

 It is interesting to find that, in this bed, not only the relic of a fossil 

 Monkey has been found, but that Mr. Colchester has also discovered 

 fossil teeth and portions of the lower jaw of an Opossum, which are figured 

 in the Magazine of Natural History for 1839, p. 450. That the relic 

 assumed to be that of a species of Monkey (Macacus), is truly so, there 

 cannot be the slightest doubt. It has been rigorously examined by Pro- 

 fessor Owen, who, in the above publication, has given a detailed account 

 of it. The tooth, it may be here observed, is somewhat narrower than in 

 any recent species of Macacus ; but the posterior fifth tubercle (one of 

 the characters of the -genus) presents, as in most of that group, two cusps, 

 instead of being simple, as in the genus Semnopithecus. In the Annals 

 of Natural History, for November, 1839, Professor Owen describes a 



