3 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I cannot enter into all the details required for the complete demon- 

 stration of this statement. I limit myself to two facts that I hope 

 will suffice to convince you. 



The first is: not a single species of vegetable, not a single species 

 of animal, is found at the same time all over the globe. 



The most wide-spread species occupied at first only a small part of 

 the globe, and man must have carried with him not only certain vege- 

 tables but also certain annuals, to have them as widely diffused as we 

 find them in our day. Notwithstanding this intelligent and voluntary 

 intervention, you well know that there are certain parts of the globe 

 occupied by man in which neither the vegetables that have accom- 

 panied us almost everywhere, nor the animals which we habitually 

 transport, can suiwive. Man, on the contrary, is cosmopolitan in every 

 sense of the word; that is to say, we find him everywhere, under the 

 ice of the poles, as under the equator. 



Hence, if he had originated wherever we find him, he would con- 

 stitute a single exception among all organic and living beings, whether 

 vegetable or animal. 



This reason, by itself, ought to make us accept at least this much : 

 that man has, at all events, peopled a part of the globe by emigration. 



But we may go much further ; and always, by virtue of the law 

 which I have just stated, we may say that he had his origin in one 

 spot, and that a narrow one. 



In fact, when we study animals, we find that the extent occupied 

 by a species, what we call its habitat, is as much less extended as the 

 species is more perfected, more elevated, in the zoological series. 



Not only is this true of species, but of types themselves. 



Thus, below man, the animal form which most reminds us of the 

 human form is, you know, that of the monkey. Are monkeys among 

 the number of the most widely-distributed animals ? No. The mon- 

 key-type is found neither in very cold countries nor in the greater part 

 of the temperate regions, but only in the warmest parts of the globe. 

 Besides, a great part of Oceanica contains not a single monkey. 



If, now, we no longer consider the type, the entire gi*oup of mon- 

 keys, but only the species which approaches nearest to us, we see it occu- 

 pying an area more and more limited. America has not a single spe- 

 cies of monkey in common with Africa and Asia. And, when we come 

 to the most perfect monkeys to those which, by reason of their great 

 resemblance to man, have been called anthropoid, that is, with a human 

 form we see the area of their habitat is restricted still more and be- 

 comes extremely narrow. So the orang-outang, one of those species 

 of monkeys which some have wished to make our ancestor, is found 

 only in the isle of Borneo, or at most, perhaps, in the isle of Su- 

 matra ; the gorilla, still another of the species which comes nearest 

 man in his general proportions, occupies only a small part of the west- 

 ern regions of Africa. 



