4
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
elephants and rhinoceroses, which are at present animals of warm
climates, could adapt themselves by a hairy and woolly covering
to exist even in Arctic latitudes, it seems likely that some of the
other animals, of which we have found only the bones and teeth,
also had some peculiar adaptation. It is perhaps possible, in
considering whole Mammalian faunas, to distinguish those
which denote a milder and those which mark a colder episode ;
but it is difficult to be sure about the climatic needs of any
particular species or race.
Some of the remains of Pleistocene Mammals illustrating
these remarks may now be examined in more detail.
Monkey.—As a most striking example of difficulties due
to the rarity and imperfection of the fossils, the evidence of the
occurrence of a monkey at Grays may be noticed. A fragment
of maxilla of Macacus containing one molar tooth was found in
the Grays brickearth in 1845, and described and figured by Owen
as the type of an extinct species, M. pliocenus.5 As, however,
the specimen was not forthcoming for examination for nearly
forty years, the record was generally assumed to be a mistake,
and Macacus was never accepted as a member of the Grays
fauna. When Sir Richard Owen retired from the British Museum
(Nat. Hist.) in 1884, the late Mr. William Davies and I recovered
the fragment from the accumulations in his private room, and it
has since been exhibited in the Geological Department of the
Museum. From its condition, there can be no doubt that it
is indeed a Grays fossil, and its determination as Macacus is
equally certain. One other fragment of a monkey has been
found more recently in a British Pleistocene deposit, namely, the
distal end of a humerus described by Mr. Martin Hinton from the
Norfolk Forest Bed. 6 Macacus, or a closely related genus,
was thus undoubtedly a member of the early Pleistocene fauna
in this part of Europe. It is only unfortunate that the species
is so imperfectly known. The Barbary Ape (Macacus inuus),
of course, still lives so far north as the Rock of Gibraltar, and
the late Rev. J. W. Kenworthy once showed me a skull of this
animal (evidently introduced as a pet or curiosity) which he had
found in a Roman refuse heap at Braintree.
5 R. Owen, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, vol. xxi. (1845), p. 573 ; A History of British
Fossil Mammals and Birds (London, 1846), p. xlvi., with woodcut.
6 M. A. C. Hinton, "Note on the Discovery of a Bone of a Monkey in the Norfolk Forest
Bed," Geol. Mag., 1908, pp. 440-44, pl. xxiii., figs. 1-3.