Page:Natural History (1848).djvu/17

Rh the grand peculiarity of these animals resides, and by this they are separated from man by an interval wide indeed. ‘They are quadrumanous, i. e. four-handed. Each of the four extremities is furnished with four long fingers, and a short thumb projecting at an angle from the line of the fingers, and opposible to them. But poorly fitted for progression on the ground, these long grasping hands are most effective instruments for seizing the branches of trees, and thus enabling the animals to proceed by a rapid and secure course through the mazes of the forests, and to reside among their umbrageous retreats as entirely as the perching birds. Many of our readers may have often observed a Monkey use his hind-hand to take hold of any presented object; for as we have already said, the bones of the posterior limbs have the same freedom of movement that marks those of the anterior pair, and thus the extremities of the former are endowed with the versatile powers confined in man to the hands. Yet even in the Orangs and Gibbons, there is a vast inferiority in their hands to those of Man. The thumb, small, feeble, and set far back, is but imperfectly antagonistic to the fingers ; these again, greatly lengthened, and adapted thus for hooking round an object, have scarcely any power of separate motion among themselves; and the palm, instead of being hollow, is narrow, flat, and tapering from the wrist. "Compared with the hands of Man,” observes Mr. Martin, “those of the Simiz are rude and imperfect instruments: constructed as tree-climbing organs, they are incapable of the manipulations which the human hand executes