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There I found a "poor relation," who made my acquaintance without introduction. A large baboon, or ape, some creature of that family, was sitting at the open door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring at me, and if the keeper had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a quadrumanous rough, as he was.
"Chick, chicker chack, chack," cried the monkey; and turning sharply, he gave Billy's detaining hand a nip with his teeth, sharply enough to make the man utter an exclamation and let go, when the monkey leaped on to the bulwark, seized a rope, and went up it hand over hand in a quadrumanous manner to a height that he considered safe, and there held on and hung, looking down at the dog, chattering volubly the while.
Hilaire is clearly in error in ascribing the invention of the term "quadrumanous" to Buffon, though "himanous" may belong to him.
Though I have expressed my doubts of the existence of an unknown species of large monkey in a continent which appears entirely destitute of quadrumanous animals of the family of the orangs, cynocephali, mandrils, and pongos; yet it should be remembered that almost all matters of popular belief, even those most absurd in appearance, rest on real facts, but facts ill observed.
The circumstance that we oppose the thumb to the other four fingers in our hand, and so can grasp things, seemed to be a special distinction of the hand in contrast to the foot, in which the corresponding great toe cannot be opposed in this way to the others. But the apes can grasp with the hind-foot as well as the fore, and so were regarded as quadrumanous.
The next suggests a closer association of our ancestors of the olden time with "our poor relations" of the quadrumanous family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately, however, even if we must account for him scientifically, man with his two feet stands upon a foundation of his own.
The strongly convex upper lip frequently seen among the lower classes of the Irish is a modified quadrumanous character. Many people, especially those of the Sclavic races, have more or less embryonic noses. A retreating chin is a marked monkey character.
Place men upon 'all fours' and the law governing the presence and absence of valves is at once apparent, applicable, so far as I have been able to ascertain, to all quadrupedal and quadrumanous animals: Dorsal veins are valved; cephalad, ventrad, and caudad veins have no valves."
'I've seen one monkey force open the jaws of his brother, resolutely introduce his fingers, pluck from the sanctuary of his cheek the filbert he had just stowed there for his private nutrition and delight, and crunch and eat it with a stern ecstasy of selfishness, himself; and I fancy that the feelings of the quadrumanous victim, his jaws aching, his pouch outraged, and his bon-bouche in the miscreant's mouth, a little resembles those of the physician who has suffered so hideous a mortification as that of Toole.
I first consider those which are used in the tables of embryonic, quadrumanous, and race characters: MALE. FEMALE. I. The General Form. 2. Shoulders square. Shoulders slope. 4. Waist less constricted. Waist more constricted. 5. Hips narrower. Hips wider. 6. Legs longer. Muscles larger. Muscles smaller. II. The Integuments, etc. 10.
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