_Fossil quadrumana._--Until within a few years (1836, 1837), not a 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.