single bone of any quadrumanous animal, such as the orang, ape, baboon,
and monkey, had been discovered in a fossil state, although so much
progress had been made in bringing to light the extinct mammalia of
successive tertiary eras, both carnivorous and herbivorous. The total
absence of these anthropomorphous tribes among the records of a former
world, had led some to believe that the type of organization most nearly
resembling the human, came so late in the order of creation, as to be
scarcely, if at all, anterior to that of man. That such generalizations
were premature, I endeavored to point out in the first edition of this
work,[224] in which I stated that the bones of quadrupeds hitherto met
with in tertiary deposits were chiefly those which frequent marshes,
rivers, or the borders of lakes, as the elephant, rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, tapir, hog, deer, and ox, while species which live in
trees are extremely rare in a fossil state. I also hinted, that we had
as yet no data for determining how great a number of the one kind we
ought to find, before we have a right to expect a single individual of
the other. Lastly, I observed that the climate of the more modern (or
Post-Eocene) tertiary periods in England was not tropical, and that in
regard to the London clay, of which the crocodiles, turtles, and fossil
fruits implied a climate hot enough for the quadrumana, we had as yet
made too little progress in ascertaining what were the Eocene
pachydermata of England, to entitle us to expect to have discovered any
quadrumana of the same date.

Since those remarks were first written, in 1829, a great number of
extinct species have been added to our collections of tertiary mammalia
from Great Britain and other parts of the world. At length, between the
years 1836 and 1839, a few remains of quadrumana were found in France
and England, India and Brazil. Those of India, belonging to more than
one extinct species of monkey, were first discovered near the Sutlej, in
lat. 30 degrees N., in tertiary strata, of which the age is not yet
determined; the Brazilian fossil, brought from the basin of the Rio das
Velhas, about lat. 18 degrees S., is referable to a form now peculiar in
America, allied to the genus Callithrix, the species being extinct. The
skull and other bones met with in the South of France belong to a
gibbon, or one of the tailless apes, which stand next in the scale of
organization to the orang. It occurred at Sansan, abou