The first apes of which we are going to speak, walking upon the sole of the feet and the palms of their hands are, then, unreservedly _quadrupeds_. In this particularity they resemble other mammalia, among whom the pectoral, as well as the abdominal, members are chiefly organs of locomotion; only these apes also use their four extremities for another purpose, which appears to be entirely secondary and derived,--that of _prehension_. And it is precisely because the organisation of their members is purposely modified by reason of a new, special, and uncommon function, that they have been able to furnish us with a sufficiently defined characteristic, so that we may specify an order,--that of the _quadrumana_. Among the anthropomorphous apes, the folded or bent hand seems an organ especially adapted for prehension,[104] serving, in a secondary manner, for locomotion; whilst the foot, the especial organ of locomotion, preserves the faculty of seizing anything by means of an opposing thumb. In man, the superior member is not at all fit for walking; and the inferior, used for locomotion, as in the two preceding groups, also preserves its faculty of prehension: observation proves this as well as anatomy. We see that there again; as everywhere else in an organic point of view, the anthropomorphous quadrumana are a veritable transition from man to the other families of apes. It has been proposed to extend the signification of the word hand, and to apply it to every terminal extremity of a member capable of seizing anything, including the paw of the lemur and the claws of the parrot. We are inclined to restrict the name, like Linnæus, De Blainville, and Cuvier, to an extremity formed of fingers, and with an _opposing thumb_. But even in confining the definition to such a narrow compass, we think we have shown that man, in reality, is _quadrumanous_, this definition applying equally to the foot, where the great toe serves--among half the people, at least, on the earth--for the purpose of prehension, and remains, as É. Geoffroy has remarked, quite separate from the other toes, when the foot is not deformed by boots or shoes:[105] therefore, nothing more can be said in favour of an Order of _Bimana_, or a human kingdom.