THE LAST STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 831 



pliological feature ; but I ask, if over and above the details of the 

 conformation of the teeth, fingers, and toes, the tarsus and carpus, 

 above the characters that reflect the exact kind of alimentation, 

 the precise method of locomotion, there is not something more 

 general, answering to special habits, to more or less aerian, terres- 

 trial, aquatic, diurnal, or nocturnal ways of life or abode, which 

 impresses on the totality of the organism that general family 

 resemblance which the naturalist recognizes outside of all those 

 special modes of adaptation, which he studies with so much care 

 to find in it a testimony, an expression, a formula in support of 

 his thought and vision. A particular trait, a progressive vari- 

 ation of form, it is evident, reflects in general the elevated influ- 

 ence to which I allude. The teeth, the condyle of the jaw and its 

 articular cavity, the temporal fosses, express quite exactly the 

 regimen of the animal, and consequently some of its habits. The 

 patagium, of which some traces have been observed among the 

 petaurite marsupials, permits us to establish a series leading to 

 the bats and passing by the galeopitheci. The genealogy of the 

 perissodactyli, one of the most satisfactory that science has deter- 

 mined, rests essentially on a single character, the number and de- 

 gree of atrophy of the fingers or toes. 



But is the chosen form of character all ? Has not nature dif- 

 ferent ways of reaching the same end, and can it not distribute 

 its influence over the whole of the organism without making any 

 of the characteristics particularly distinctive, and even while leav- 

 ing present seemingly contradictory ones ? The mouse is recog- 

 nized everywhere by its attitude, its walk, its head, and its general 

 shape, and still is found under different names among the aplacen- 

 tal and the placental orders, with the rodents and with the insectiv- 

 ora, terrestrial, half -aquatic, half -flying, and flying. The same is 

 the case with the genus squirrel, which is scattered, with changed 

 names, among several orders, being simply modified in some 

 peculiarity. There is a group of most remarkable leaping animals 

 among the marsupials, which, while preserving its type, is dis- 

 tributed, according as it acquires certain new characters, among 

 various placental orders. 



I ask, then, if the peculiar bearings of the monkeys, if their 

 habitat, exclusively in trees among their most pronounced rep- 

 resentatives, which impresses a special stamp on the whole indi- 

 vidual ; if the proportions of their body, the extent and situation 

 of the articular surfaces and the consequent mobility of the 

 segments upon one another, do not furnish a sufficient motive for 

 establishing their relationship with the lemurs, and not with the 

 ungulates ? Likewise the lemurs, which lead a similar life, con- 

 duct to the marsupials, which also constantly inhabit trees. Be- 

 tween the ungulates and the monkeys I see nothing common of 



