176 MAN AND APES. 



Kolk, and Vrolik,* the lines of affinity exist- 

 ing between different Primates construct rather 

 a network than a ladder. 



It is indeed a tangled web, the meshes of 

 which no naturalist has as yet unravelled by 

 the aid of natural selection. ISTav, more, these 



i/7 7 



complex affinities form such a net for the use 

 of the teleological retiarius as it will be dif- 

 ficult for his Lucretian antagonist to evade, 

 even with the countless tarns and doublings 

 of Darwinian evolutions. 



But, it may be replied, the spontaneous 

 and independent appearance of these similar 

 structures is due to " atavism ' and " re- 

 version" — to the reappearance, that is, in 

 modern descendants, of ancient and sometimes 

 long-lost structural characters, which formerly 

 existed in more or less remote hypothetical 

 ancestors. 



Let us see to what this reply brings us. 

 If it is true, and if man and the Orang are 

 diverging descendants of a creature with 



* ' Kat. Hist. Review,' vol. ii. p. 117. 



