TO THE LOWER ANIMALS. 85 



from the Kangaroo and the Opossum, for example, than 

 these animals do from one another, the zoologist would 

 not only be logically compelled to rank it in the same 

 order with these, but he would not think of doing other- 

 wise. 



Bearing this obvious' course of zoological reasoning in 

 mind, let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our 

 thinking selves from the mask of humanity ; let us ima- 

 gine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly ac- 

 quainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and 

 employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new 

 and singular 'erect and featherless. biped,' which some 

 enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space 

 and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for 

 our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum. 

 We should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the 

 mammalian vertebrates ; and his lower jaw, his molars, 

 and his brain, would leave no room for doubting the sys- 

 tematic position of the new genus among those mammals, 

 whose young are nourished during gestation by means of 

 a placenta, or what are called the ' placental mammals.' 



Further, the most superficial study would at once con- 

 vince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, 

 neither the Whales nor the hoofed creatures, nor the 

 Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats, Dogs, and 

 Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the In- 

 sectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim 

 our ''Homo ' as one of themselves. 



There would remain then, but one order for compari- 

 son, that of the Aj^es (using that word in its broadest 

 sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself 

 to this — is Man so different from any of these Apes that 

 he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ 



