3hap. VI. Affinities and Genealogy. 1 57 



With respect to the absence of fossil remains, serving to 

 connect man with his ape-like progenitors, no one will lay mnch 

 stress on this fact who reads Sir C. Lyell's discussion, 19 where 

 he shews that in all the vertebrate classes the discovery of fossil 

 remains has been a very slow and fortuitous process. Nor 

 should it be forgotten that those regions which are the most 

 likely to afford remains connecting man with some extinct ape- 

 like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists. 



Lovjer Stages in the Genealogy of Man. — We have seen that 

 man appears to have diverged from the Catarhine or Old World 

 division of the Siniiadae, after these had diverged from the New 

 World division. We will now endeavour to follow the remote 

 traces of his genealogy, trusting principally to the mutual 

 affinities between the various classes and orders, with some 

 slight reference to the periods, as far as ascertained, of their 

 successive appearance on the earth. The Lemuridae stand 

 below and near to the Simiadae, and constitute a very distinct 

 family of the Primates, or, according to Hackel and others, a 

 distinct Order. This group is diversified and broken to an 

 extraordinary degree, and includes many aberrant forms. It 

 has, therefore, probably suffered much extinction. Most of the 

 remnants survive on islands, such as Madagascar and the 

 Malayan archipelago, where they have not been exposed to so 

 severe a competition as they would have been on well-stocked 

 continents. This group likewise presents many gradations, 

 leading, as Huxley remarks, 20 " insensibly from the- crown and 

 " summit of the animal creation down to creatures from which 

 " there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and 

 " least intelligent of the placental mammalia." From these 

 various considerations it is probable that the Simiadae were 

 originally developed from the progenitors of the existing 

 Lemuridae ; and these in their turn from forms standing very 

 low in the mammalian series. 



The Marsupials stand in many important characters below the 

 placental mammals. They appeared at an earlier geological 

 period, and their range was formerly., much more extensive 

 than at present. Hence the Placentata are generally supposed 

 to have been derived from the Implacentata or Marsupials; 

 not, however, from forms closely resembling the existing Mar- 

 supials, but from their early progenitors. The Monotremata are 

 plainly allied to the Marsupials, forming a third and still lower 



19 'Elements of Geology,' 1865, 20 'Man's Tlace in Nature,' jv 



pp. 583-585. ' Antiquity of Man,' 105. 

 1863, p. 145. 



