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Intermediate links between the Bimana and the Quadrumana are lacking altogether; so that, put the genealogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, the four-handed races will not serve for our forerunners; at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is producible with great toes, instead of thumbs, upon his nether extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping the chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many ages ago, before the British Channel existed, says Lyell , and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their great-toes in a divergent and thumb-like fashion.
And as to the foot, the great toe of the Marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the Orang while in the Lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb-like and opposable as in the Gorilla but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the 'astragalus' and the 'os calcis', are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal.
It is a very pleasant country, but it has not the charms of Tahiti, or the grandeur of Brazil. The next day I ascended La Pouce, a mountain so called from a thumb-like projection, which rises close behind the town to a height of 2,600 feet. The centre of the island consists of a great platform, surrounded by old broken basaltic mountains, with their strata dipping seawards.
When the snow lay in a deep cake, showing only the two thumb-like marks at long intervals made by the rabbit in its leaping flight, and when the air was so tense and cold you could hear the bark of a dog far off, Bobaday used to say he would love to live in the woods all the time. He would chop to keep himself warm. He loved to drag the air into his lungs when it seemed frozen to a solid.
And as to the foot, the great toe of the Marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the Orang while in the Lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb-like and opposable as in the Gorilla but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the 'astragalus' and the 'os calcis', are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal.
It is a very pleasant country, but it has not the charms of Tahiti, or the grandeur of Brazil. The next day I ascended La Pouce, a mountain so called from a thumb-like projection, which rises close behind the town to a height of 2,600 feet. The centre of the island consists of a great platform, surrounded by old broken basaltic mountains, with their strata dipping seawards.
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