Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/105

Rh that they are zoologically inferior to the true monkeys, and consequently more likely to have existed previously to them.

The fossil monkeys of the New World are all of one geological age, the later pliocene. They are, moreover, analogous to the existing Platyrrhine monkeys of Brazil, thus proving that the physiological division of true monkeys into Catarrhine and Platyrrhine existed so long ago as the Pliocene age. We find no Platyrrhine monkeys in the Old; no Catarrhine in the New World. The Protopithecus Brasiliensis discovered by Dr. Lund in limestone caverns in Brazil, offers the nearest analogy to the howler monkeys (Mycetes) which are still found in the same locality. The Sapajou (Cebus macrognathus), the Sagouin (Callithrix primævus), and the little Ouistiti (Jacchus grandis), are all Brazilian forms. No Transmutationist will assert the probable, or even possible, derivation of American types of men from the Platyrrliine monkeys.

Turning to the Old World, the earliest and one of the most interesting forms of fossil monkey has been discovered in the Eocene sand, at Kyson in Suffolk. It is the Eopithecus Colchesteri of Owen. Its nearest living analogue, the Macacus rhesus, is found on the banks of the Ganges. The Macacine form of monkey reappears in the pliocene beds at Grays, Essex, again reproducing a Bengal form, the Bonnet Chinois monkey (Macacus Sinicus). The older pliocene or newer miocene beds of the Sewalik, or Sub-Himalayan range, produce two species of Semnopithecus not generally distinct from those of the present day. A third Semnopithecus is found in the pliocene sands at Montpellier. In the miocene beds of Pikermi, at the foot of Pentelicon, in Greece, are to be found the remains of two species of Mesopithecus, a genus which Professor Wagner considers as intermediate between Hylobates and Semnopithecus; but Professor Owen has pointed out that the third lobe of the last molar is as well developed in Mesopithecus as in Semnopithecus.

Hitherto we have only had to deal with tailed monkeys, mostly of small dimensions, and not differing much in type from those of the present day. Evidence has however been afforded to us of the occurrence of two forms of fossil Gibbons (Pliopithecus and Dryopithecus), one of which has been regarded by more than one distinguished naturalist as approaching nearer to the human type than even the Gorilla. The illustrious Sir Charles Lyell has stated "that in anatomical structure, as well as in stature, the Dryopithecus came nearer to man than any quadrumanous species, living or fossil, before known to zoolo-