t forty miles west
of Toulouse, in lat. 43 degrees 40 minutes N., in freshwater strata,
probably of the Miocene or middle tertiary period. Lastly, the English
quadrumane first met with, occurred in a more ancient stratum than the
rest, and at a point more remote from the equator. It belongs to the
genus Macacus, is an extinct species, and was found in Suffolk, in lat.
52 degrees,[225] in the London clay, the fossils of which, such as
crocodiles, turtles, shells of the genus Nautilus, and many curious
fruits, had already led geologists to the conclusion that the climate of
that era (the Eocene) was warm and nearly tropical.

Some years later (in 1846) the jaw of another British species of fossil
monkey, Macacus pliocenus, was announced by Mr. Owen as having been met
with in the newer Pleiocene strata, on the banks of the Thames, at
Grays, in Essex, accompanying the remains of hippopotamus, elephant, and
other quadrupeds, and associated with freshwater and land shells, most
of which are now inhabitants of the British Isles.[226]

When we consider the small area of the earth's surface hitherto
explored geologically, and the new discoveries brought to light daily,
even in the environs of great European capitals, we must feel that it
would be rash to assume that the Lower Eocene deposits mark the era of
the first creation of quadrumana. It would, however, be still more
unphilosophical to infer, as some writers have done, from a single
extinct species of this family obtained in a latitude far from the
tropics, that the Eocene quadrumana did not attain as high a grade of
organization as they do in our own times. What would the naturalist know
of the apes and orangs now contemporary with man, if our investigations
were restricted to such northern latitudes as those where alone the
geologist has hitherto found all the fossil quadrumana of Europe?

_Cetacea._--The absence of Cetacea from rocks older than the Eocene has
been frequently adduced as lending countenance to the theory of the very
late appearance of the highest class of Vertebrata on the earth.
Professor Sedgwick possesses in the Cambridge Museum a mass of
anchylosed cervical vertebrae of a whale, which he found in drift clay
near Ely, and which he has no doubt was washed out of the Kimmeridge
clay, an upper member of the Oolite. According to Professor Owen, it
exhibits well-marked specific characters, distinguishing it from all
other known recent or fossil cetacea. D