28 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



to that of man, and we find Descartes (for example, in his "Discourse on 

 Method" Part V., 1637) advising those who wished to understand his 

 theory of the action of the lungs and circulatory system, "to take the trouble 

 of getting dissected in their presence the heart of some large animal pos- 

 sessed of lungs, for this is throughout sujficienily like the human" (ital. mihi). 

 And it was further known that of all animals the monkeys are most nearly 

 like man, both externally and internally. This was asserted by Aristotle 

 and other classical authors, but was fully demonstrated in a carefully pre- 

 pared and illustrated work ^ on the anatomy and appearance of animals 

 from the Jardin du Roi, by a committee of savants of the French Academy, 

 appointed by the Grand Monarch. 



This work and these important observations may or may not have come 

 under the notice of Linnaeus on the occasion of his visit to Paris in 1738. 

 At any rate, he did not hesitate to follow the logical consequences of these 

 facts, namely, that in a strictly zoological classification, man would be 

 grouped not only in the class Mammalia, but even in the same ordinal divi- 

 sion with the monkeys. Accordingly, in the tenth edition of the Systema 

 the earlier name Anthropomorphse is replaced by Primates, and the genera 

 Homo, Simia, Lemur and Vespertilio, are grouped under that order. The 

 Primates were thus regarded as the chiefs of the hierarchy of terrestrial 

 beings, and consequently, as in nearly all subsequent schemes down to the 

 Darwinian Epoch, head the classified legions of creatures. Linnseus was too 

 often at fault in surmising the generic and ordinal affinities of the species of 

 the lower vertebrates; but this bold allocation of man to the order Primates 

 surely bears the marks of genius, and led the way to the modern generaliza- 

 tion that man is knit by ties of blood kinship to the Primates, and more 

 remotely to the whole organic world. 



LinnoBus's Princi'ples in his Classification of tlie Mammalia. 



The diagnostic definition given by Linnaeus of the order Primates may 

 be cited because it rests upon the principles and theories which guided him 

 in classification and which led to his most successful groupings, as well as 

 to his serious blunders. This definition is as follows: — 



Inferior front teeth iv, parallel, laniariform [canine] teeth solitary [that is, in a single 



pair above and below]. 

 Mamniie pectoral, one pair. 

 The anterior extremities are hands. 

 The arms are separated by clavicles, the gait usually on all fours ("incessu tetrapodo 



volgo"). 

 They climb trees and pluck the fruits thereof. 



» Mgraoires pour servir & I'histoire naturelle des aainiaux, &la Haye, 1715 (4to, 2 vols.), 

 redig^es par Perrault et Dodart. 



