THE LAST STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 823 



the lower primates are simply the beginning of the series, the 

 transition from the other orders to that of the primates, is but a 

 step. The lemurs furnish most of the imperfect primates of which 

 we have spoken. They included or include three groups of ani- 

 mals — the GaleopUlieci , the Cheiromys, and the lemurs proper. 



The GaleopitJieci, or flying-cats, inhabit the Sunda Islands, the 

 Moluccas, and the Philippine Islands. They furnish one of the 

 examples of the difficulty of placing in our classification certain 

 groups qualified with paradoxical characteristics, for the reason 

 that they are transitional groups having some right to be put in 

 several. 



The Cheiromys include only one genus, the aye-aye of Mada- 

 gascar. It resembles the squirrel, but has features also of the 

 ape and the lemur. By dentition it is an insectivore or lemur in 

 infancy and a rodent in adult age. It is evidently a primate at 

 the start, but a species hesitating whether it shall continue a pri- 

 mate or become a rodent. 



The lemurs proper are divided into the fossil and the recent. 

 The former appear in the Eocene when there existed parallel with 

 them the marsupials in a declining stage and the first placental 

 mammals — the carnivora, rodents, ungulates, and the insectivora. 

 Europe has furnished five genera of them and America more, 

 the most important among them being the Anaptomorplius, from 

 which Mr. Cope makes man a direct derivative. The recent spe- 

 cies are distributed in three geographical groups, the first and 

 most numerous being confined to the island of Madagascar, the 

 second to that island and Africa south of the Sahara, and the 

 third living in the island of Ceylon, the Malacca Peninsula, the 

 Moluccas, and the Philippines, or the regions which Haeckel sup- 

 poses to constitute the remains of the vast southern continent 

 which he calls lemurian. 



The lemurs are tree-dwelling and nocturnal animals. They 

 have four opposable thumbs with the exception of the tarsier, 

 which has only the hind thumbs opposable. All their fingers, as a 

 rule, have nails except the hind forefinger, which has a claw, or in 

 the loris, the fore little finger ; but the nails are all badly shaped 

 and seem transitional from claws. A general formula can not be 

 framed for the teeth. The number varies from thirty to thirty- 

 six. 



All these facts tend to establish that the lemurs have not a 

 fixed, homogeneous type, but that they constitute a transitional 

 group from animals with claws to animals with nails. They may 

 consequently be regarded as the first or perhaps the second stage 

 (regarding the Cheiromys as the first) toward the better charac- 

 terized monkeys ; but serious objections are brought against this 

 view. One was based by M. Broca on certain features of the pla- 



