THE COLOB I. 
10 ?. 
the creatures which have rudimentary organs. The four-legged ruminating or cud-chewing animals 
have bones and feet of peculiar arrangement, and there is no difficulty in at once knowing 
a ruminant by its bones. Now, in former ages, and before there was a trace of man on the globe, 
there were ruminants, as known by their bones, found in strata or deposits, and they had incisor 
teeth in their upper jaws when full grown, and not only when in the calf condition. The in- 
ference to be drawn is, that the modern Oxen are the descendants of those ancient forms with incisor 
teeth, and that disuse, probably produced by the introduction of grass-feeding on a grand scale, instead 
of leaf and bud-nibbling, gradually diminished the strength and permanence of the front upper teeth, 
and finally only left the simple traces of them which we have mentioned. Disuse by ancestral forms, 
by the forefathers, and the carrying down the weakened and atrophied state of the structure or organs, 
Till; Cl 1IRKZA. 
are the most important considerations in any attempt at the explanation of the seeming paradox. In 
endeavouring to apply this style of reasoning to the Oolobos group — the Semnopitheci without thumbs 
— it must be asked, is there any evidence of the great antiquity of these Monkeys, and are there any 
evidences of anything wrong about the thumbs of their Asiatic allies 'l 
It is remarkable, and bears strongly upon this point, that some of the fossil remains of animals 
found in India, on the flanks of the Himalayan Mountains, have a closer resemblance to a large 
SemnopLhecus Monkey than to any other, and to one belonging to a kind much like the Entellus. 
The bony remains were found in collections of shingle, clay, and sand of great depth, and which 
included also the remains of the bones of Elephants, Giraffes, Ilippopotamidse, Crocodiles, and fresh- 
water Tortoises, and other land and fresh water creatures. The deposits had accumulated in lakes 
and swamps in the plain near the distant flanks of a low range of lulls, the ancient foundations of the 
present great snowy range, and then upheaval took place, which gave the very home of snow 
(Himalaya) its present vast altitude. The plains, lakes, and swamps were lifted up and tilted, and 
their relics are now found resting at a considerable angle on the main chain, and covered and folded 
over by the pressure exercised during the marvellous change in the physical geography of the district. 
Semnopitheci lived in India, then, before the Himalayas were a great chain of mountains, and they 
lived with animals which were African as well as Asiatic in their character. The vast age of the 
14 
