14 Bimana. MAMMALIA. Quadrumana. 
tints, from deep brown to a nearly perfect black, and 
the hair short and woolly in its appearance. The fore- 
head is depressed and the jaws prominent, in some 
Fig. 5. 
Negro. 
cases SO much so as almost to form a muzzle ; the face 
is flat, with the cheek-bones not very prominent ; the 
nose is broad and flat ; and the lips very thick. The 
Ethiopian variety includes all the races of Africa, from 
the southern and western boundaries of the Semitic 
nations (Moors, Arabs, and Abyssinians) to the Cape of 
Fig. 6. 
Caffre. 
Good Hope. The principal races are the true Negroes 
of Central Africa, the Catfres and Hottentots ; the 
Bushmen appear to be a degraded tribe of the latter. 
Oedek II.— quadrumana. 
The most essential character of this order is expressed 
in its name; the animals composing it are furnished 
with four grasping hands, and in the majority of 
them these are all provided w’ith opposable thumbs. 
In some, how'ever, the anterior extremities are alto- 
gether deprived of thumbs, so that the posterior feet 
alone are deserving of the title of hands; and this 
presence of true hands on the hinder extremities, consti- 
tutes the most constant character by which the Quad- 
rumana are distinguished from the rest of the placental 
Mammalia. It occurs again in the non-placental opos- 
sums, and from this circumstance, some naturalists have 
thought fit to form a single group under the name of 
Pedimana, or Foot-handed animals, for the reception 
of the Quadrumana and opossums. The only exception 
to the character here given, presented by any animal 
which we refer to this group, is that exhibited by the 
Galcopithecus, or Flying Lemur, a creature which seems 
to unite the Quadrumana with the Cheiroptera or Bats, 
having been placed, by dilferent zoologists, sometimes 
in one and sometimes in the other of these orders. 
In this there are no opposable thumbs either on the 
anterior or posterior extremities. From the peculiar 
characters presented by the Galcopithecus , some zoolo- 
gists, including Professor Van der Hoeven, have even 
regarded it as entitled to form a distinct order. 
The principal distinctions betwmen the Quadrumana 
and the Bimana have already been indicated under the 
latter head; we shall, therefore, confine ourselves here 
to a general statement of the characters of the present 
order. The conversion of the hind feet into hands, and 
the accompanying modifications of the general structure 
of the hinder extremities, which, as we have already 
seen, prevent even the highest apes from easily main- 
taining the erect attitude natural to man, adapt the Quad- 
rumana most admirably for their mode of life, which 
is, in most cases, strictly arboreal; and as those species 
which are not inhabitants of the forest, are dwellers 
amongst the rocks, the advantage, even to them, of 
their hinder hands will hardly be denied by the most 
experienced cragsman. Amongst the branches ot tiie 
trees, the apes and monkeys disport themselves with 
an agility and security astonishing to the spectator, 
and the great African baboons are described as 
scrambling up the faces of nearly perpendicular rocks 
with the greatest ease. 
